Always trying to get a free lunch, the lion kingdom decided it was time to upgrade to the cheapest, lightest gopro available.  The trick is it has a fixed battery with 1 hour of recording time, while a typical lion run is 4 hours.  The battery contains a DRM chip which the camera requires to start up.  A USB cable on top of the battery would be really heavy & the battery management chip is known to randomly fail.

The journey begins by removing the easy screws. 

This hot plate had to be set to 150C to get the heat sink hot enough.

After many attempts to heat it & pry the adhesive with an xacto & screwdriver, the decision was made to grind a starter groove into the plastic in the top right corner.

Then let it sit on the hot plate for a long time to get the heat sink over 80C, while probing it to make sure it doesn't go over 80C.  Then the groove gave the screw driver enough purchase to pry apart the heat sink.  This had to be done carefully to avoid breaking the flex cable.

The speaker & microphone are on the heat sink.

Then the battery flex cable had to be peeled off its adhesive.  The battery caddy had to be unscrewed. 

Then the battery is pulled out by the wrapper.

The DRM board & battery are potted.

The potting compound rips off.

Eventually revealing the tabs.  These can be work hardened until they break off.

Then potting compound can be slowly cut off the DRM board.

The DRM board is finally revealed.

Now the great task is routing the former battery pads outside the camera, where they'll connect to either a single cell or buck converter.  Lions don't have any single cells of suitable size so a soldered buck converter seems ideal.

Some time was spent scraping adhesive so the heat sink would press fit back in place.

The wires came in a widened hole on the bottom.  Lions did the best they could with the hot snot in such a confined space.

The heat sink was taped back on.  It wouldn't power up unless the speaker module was connected.  The heat sink has to exert a static force on the flat flex cables & the SIL pad.  It won't passively stay in place without adhesive or a new enclosure.

It was set to 4.5V.  It could handle 4.6V, but it's so hard to trim the pot, lions set all the gopros to 4.5V.  The buck converter was 270mm of wire from the camera.

The mane problems were insufficient SD card speed to record 5.3k 60fps.  Lower resolutions died from overheating.  This camera doesn't support 1920x1440 or frame rates below 60fps below 2.7k. 

It burned 3A 4.5V when recording 5.3k 60fps so it probably needs a bigger buck converter.  The mane problem is the overheating.  Squeezing it to make the SIL pad more assertive, it gets too hot to touch & shuts down.

The internet stories of attaching a fan instead of the heatsink are the chatgpt garbage we've come to know & love.  It's going to need a fan on top of the heat sink & an enclosure to keep the heat sink attached.  It may end up being just as heavy & bulky as the full gopro.