Ikea ENEBY 20 Power Mod (No More Auto Sleep)

Ikea's ENEBY speakers have great sound for the price. The main downside is that they turn themselves off after about 15-20 minutes of music not playing, even if the paired device is still connected. When you turn it back on, the volume is back at the default, which is quite low. And all of that dealt with, when the speaker is turned 'off', the majority of the power is still being drawn to the power supply! Saving power is great and all, but this automatic sleep is not worth the headaches caused.

Here's how to get the ENEBY 20 (not the 30!) to stay on when you turn it on.

Supplies

Ikea ENEBY 20 (this will not work for the ENEBY 30 - I will be making another Instructable for the ENEBY 30)

Phillips head screwdriver

Soldering iron (or a sharp knife)

Step 1: Gaining Access

Before getting started, wait about five-ten minutes after unplugging the speaker from a power source (mains or the battery port) before continuing. You'll have to get pretty close to the power supply.

Firstly, remove the eight rubber plugs covering the screw holes around the perimeter of the rear of the device. You can use your fingernails or some small piece of plastic or metal to pry these out. Place them aside.

Next, remove the eight Phillips head screws underneath the rubber plugs that you just removed. Place them aside as well. There are an additional two screws in the middle of the rear of the speaker. I've highlighted them in red. You may need a Philips head screwdriver with a long narrow shaft to access these. In my case, after loosening them, they proved difficult to extract from the long passage, so I turned the speaker upside down and gently tapped with my other hand, allowing the screws to fall out of the passage. Place all ten screws aside.

Step 2: Inside the ENEBY

With the ten screws removed, you can now remove the rear panel from the speaker, which has the PCB that we want to access mounted to it. The easiest way that I found was to hook a finger inside the bass reflex port and pull it away from the rest of the enclosure. Be gentle, though, as there are cables attached to the PCB that will need to be removed before we can proceed, and we don't want to damage them.

Three of the cables currently attached to the PCB will need to be disconnected in order to get proper access. I've highlighted them with red arrows. Simply pinch the connector using the tabs and pull them away. Be aware that the two connectors on the 'far' side of the PCB are the same size, but for different purposes. Make sure that the red wire connects to the appropriate connector on the board, labelled tweeter. The connector at the bottom of the board is for the white wire of the same shape, and is labelled battery.

With those three wires disconnected, you may set the rest of the speaker aside so that you can work on the PCB.

Step 3: Soldering Time

All you need to do to make this change is to remove the R32 capacitor at the center of the PCB, marked with a red arrow. Desoldering the capacitor from the board is probably best, but if you don't have one, you have a few options otherwise. You may be able to cut the trace with a sharp hobby knife or some such, but it's a very small space. Make sure to not go too deep, and you can test with a multimeter in continuity mode if you have one to make sure that you severed the circuit.

I haven't tried it, but if you're using this speaker with a battery, you could possibly add a switch in line between the resistor to re-enable the sleep mode as needed.

Step 4: Reassembly

Reassembly is pretty straight forward. Simply do everything in reverse. :) Make sure to connect the correct adapters on the right side of the PCB, especially making sure that the tweeter wire is plugged in firmly. If the speaker connects to your paired device, but you don't hear any sound, you've likely swapped the red and the white wires as mentioned in the previous step, or you don't have the tweeter wire plugged in all the way.