Skip to main content

Opening Up Your Device

Lesson 8 from: Circuit Bending: Making Music By Rewiring Toys and Devices

J. Anthony Allen

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

8. Opening Up Your Device

Next Lesson: Make a Jumper

Lesson Info

Opening Up Your Device

Okay, So the first thing I want to do is open this thing up. Um, so I'm gonna flip it over now. Obviously, the first thing I'm gonna do is take out the batteries. Um, I don't want the batteries in there. Well, I do this, and I definitely don't want it plugged in. I think I've made that abundantly clear. Um, So here's the batteries to me. I have a little screw cover on the batteries, so I'm gonna take these out way. Go. Almost. Okay. Three batteries, air out Now, there should be no electricity flowing through this. That doesn't mean you still couldn't get a little shock. Um, sometimes these construe or a little bit of electricity, but it's pretty minimal. There's not much to worry about. So now to open this up, I need to go around and find all of the little, um, all of these little holes where there are screws. Every device is different. Obviously a couple tips. So always make sure you look underneath the battery pack to see if there's a little screw in here. Basically, what we want to ...

do is there's this line going all the way around and Obviously, this is different, everything but in all devices. But our goal is to separate these two pieces and basically pull this back part off so that we can get access to the circuit board. So I'm gonna unscrew all these pieces. Um, all the little screws I gotta take out, and then, um, we'll open it up and see what we've got. Okay? I've got all the screws out, and now it's time for the big reveal. I think I've got them all out. So now I'm just going to kind of gently try to peel this away. Now, one really important thing here is that there's going to be at least one wire. Probably at least two wires, I should say connecting that batteries to the circuit board. So this isn't going to come all the way off? Never just ripped this off because it is going to be attached. So we're going to kind of gently move it aside, see if I can get it. So you get a good view. Okay, So here's the inside, and the bad news is not really seeing what I want to see. What I want to see is the circuit board, and it's not quite here yet. Um, there's a switch right there, which is interesting. I wonder what that does. Um oh, I see. It's ah, it's the on off switch. This is the other side of it. If we flipped it over, this would be the on off switch. When you turn that, it hits that. I see It's kind of weird way to do it, but it works. So I think the actual circuit board I got to go a little bit deeper. I think it's gonna be underneath this, So let's try that out. I got a couple screws here that I can pull out. Okay. Are four screws holding that on so I should be able to lift this up. Now, that's what I'm looking for. Okay, so here is the circuit board. This is great, cause this is a nice and simple one. Um, there's probably a microchip somewhere, maybe on the other side of this other piece. But this might be enough to get me what I want. Because what I'm looking for is all these little metal points. These little sauder points because I'm gonna jump into those and connect him to basically make little short circuits all over the place. You can see this is kind of fun. These are little rubber stoppers. These air with the keys hit. So these little points here hit the keys. And that's what triggers and note was kind of fun. No one really crucial thing here to note that I have not disconnected anything. So if I put the batteries back in right now, everything works right, cause I didn't pull any wires off of anything. I just pulled the plastic apart, so everything still should work. I've got my circuit board out. Ah, and now I can start to have a little bit of fun with it.

Ratings and Reviews

Karolina Kaminska
 

I am a complete beginner to this topic and I enjoyed watching the free live stream of this course. It taught me enough to get started with some ideas, although I anticipate I'll have to follow up with other YouTube videos to ensure I understand enough for different kinds of toys and techniques. Thanks!

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES