Pair & Go Wii Fit Battery Pack - Rubbish!

I want to tell you a story about really appalling industrial design.  This isn't about a nuclear reactor melting down due to covered switches, or even lethal doses of radiation - but of a much more sinister threat....

Pair and Go's battery pack for the Wii Fit!

Take a look at their promotional image - it seems like a nice, drop in replacement for 4 AA batteries.  What could possibly go wrong?

As it happens, the battery pack is ginormous.  It doesn't lay flush with the board; it juts out several centimetres.

Ordinarily, that wouldn't be a problem.  But because it's on the underside of the board, it rest on the floor and throws off the board's sensors.  The placement of the battery pack means that all your balance scores are shifted to the right.  It also drops about 13Kg from your weight!

So, as you can see, much more dangerous than Three Mile Island or Therac 25 - this will leave you obese and walking wonky!

So, what's a geek to do? To the Bat-Screwdrivers, Robin!

The insides are fairly emply.  There's no reason why they couldn't have managed to fit it all into the space provided for the AA batteries.  Lazy product design.

All we have are a thin battery, a circuit board with USB connector and LED, and the housing to fit in the battery compartment.

With a bit of fiddling, we can get the components to lay flat along the balance board.

A little bit of tape to secure it.  I also had to snap off the plastic lugs witha pair of pliers.

And there we are, how to transform a crappy battery pack into something slightly less crappy.  Sure, it's not pretty - but at least my Balance Board now reports accurately.