Super Soco TS1200R Power Button Reverse Engineering + Replacement

Mar 4th 2025

My power button for Cherry, my electric scooter (Super Soco TS1200R) broke. While it looked cool, the button was clearly not designed to be used in a place where it rains 166 days of the year. This post is a short guide on how to replace the button with a relatively more waterproof option.

First, a disassembly of the original button. There's a four-terminal JST-SM plug, with about 15cm of wire between it and the button. The button has a VCC (assumed to be ~12V), a KEY, and two low-side connections to two LED strings that share the VCC (see diagram). One of the LED strings seems to light up whenever the bike is on. I think the smaller string only lights up when you press the button? I'm not sure.

Anyways, I bought this momentary "anti-vandal" button from Lee's Electronics. The button was 16mm, but I think the panel hole can fit up to a 19mm button. I also considered these two buttons (button 1, button 2), but they had shorter bodies and no LED. They can probably still fit, but you'd have to remove the rubber mount that came with the original button, and the button would sit lower. I believe these buttons are only IP66 rated, but hopefully this is more than the original button. I'm tired of carrying around a paperclip to hotwire my own bike.

I soldered the red wire (VCC) to the NO terminal and the "WYQY" terminal of the button. The black wire (KEY) to the C terminal. The green (LED 1) to the other LED terminal. I left the yellow wire hanging.

Wrap it all up in electrical tape (heat-shrink would go way better)

I 3D printed a sort of "washer" to keep the button from falling through the panel hole. I reused the rubber mount from the original button, as well as the original backing "washer".

You can view the CAD models here.

Here's some closeups of the soldering job. Instead of adding a wire for the VCC connection (because it shares two button terminals), I just bent one of the pins into the middle.

Anyways, time will tell if it holds up to the rain.