All right. so let's whip this baby apart and see what's inside like I Don't exactly know I have never played this rock band thing so I don't know. like if you know what type of sensor they got on the string, whether they have like a vibration sensor and it's you know if you put the right amount of vibration or or whatever or whether or not it's just a yeah, you actually strummed that particular string or something like that. so I'm not sure what mechanism is there, but yeah, we've got like a hundred and twenty six buttons inside this puppy as well, so we'll open that up and not sure what's in the end? Something? Hmm, I'm sure they do anyway.

OAD Let's crack it open and this is the Fender Wireless Stratocaster Guitar controller and the game itself was developed by a company called Harmonics but this actual controller itself was actually yard designed and built by Mad Catz who designed controllers and other sorts of things for the game industry. So they're the ones responsible for this puppy made in China of course. hmm taking the screws out of this puppy I'm not sure what that metal plate on there does, but anyway, let's that's a bit speed how you doing inside with all the cabling. but yeah now this has got prototype construction written all over it and they didn't really optimize it for production at all.

they just sort of I just whacked it into into production with the with the demonstrator. you know the head may demonstrate a prototype. I mean check that out. Look this cable budged onto it and like an extension.

why are there? and it soldered under there. What a complete budge that is and it's all sort of. you know, modular. they've used like existing off-the-shelf bore.

It's kind of what you'd expect. although they've gone for cheap on board here for these two. so maybe their development version. They had the quad flat packs and maybe for production.

They went for a the chip on board to save a few bucks, but you know it all. It all looks very prototype you put together. very interesting. There's absolutely nothing under that plate at all except a couple of more hidden screws.

Hmm. and that's the connector interface which goes off to you stem there and it looks like what they're doing is just using that as a As I Thought it was like a stiffener plate, but it's actually it's just ABS plastic. It even says so look ABS So like I thought yeah, maybe stiffen a plate on it, just put it there to look fancy I don't see what purpose that serves. Really sorry, it's upside down I Know all the electrons will fall out, but yeah, don't Couldn't get my camera over otherwise.

um, no surprises for guessing that we've got an Xbox custom branded chip here. Obviously they don't spin their own silicon, they're subcontracted out. But yeah, they're using their own you know, proprietary 2.4 gig controller there. so no.

Wi-Fi not bluetooth? it's yeah. Xbox II And by the way, yes, you can still save a couple of cents by going single slider board. So that's why these button interface boards or they got as you know, just the buttons on the front which press down. You don't need a double-sided board for that.

You can save a couple of cents. So they spun all these one, two, three, four, five different boards little single sided connector interface boards. It's probably another one in here for the stem connector as well. No, The only real thing of interest inside here is the pickup for these individual strings.

As you can see they got this connector board on top. All it is is just that. Just that. It actually takes this little not even really twisted pair here from the pickup sensor for each one of the strings and just connects that through to a much more robust board to board.

Interconnect there something in here. they've got some spring in there to like dampen the thing. Obviously something like that that looks like hot snot to me. So at like still more like classic.

They built this thing as the just the prototype to show the investors or mie. it is okay, let's just do a fancy mold. Acacia, No, who cares about optimizing production for this sort of stuff? We can just you know, somebody in China can just put hot snot in there just like you did in the prototype. No worries.

So if I give that string a burl here, here we go. and you just see it. give it a little bit of a wiggle there. So yeah, I suspect like the spring is just there's some sort of vibration dampening thing.

Would be my guess Now I've removed the hot snot off the end of there and you can see that's just the part of the middle clip which just bends up so they're just stopping that metal clip from falling out. So the sensors. yeah, it looks like it's embedded under the spring. So let's take the spring out and see what we can see.

It's most likely gonna be some sort of piezo ceramic transducer. Let's this is all. it's all stuck in place. Sorry.

Here we go. Yeah, there we go. Ah, look. Yep, yeah.

Piezo ceramic transducer on each. one of those strings Just stuck in there. Yeah, stuck on to the plastic plate, which just you know, vibrates back and forth when you when you strum that string as it is. So that was completely predictable.

Those things are cheap and easy. Exactly what you need to do the business. Another thing which is entirely predictable. yeah, spare no expense on the front end here.

LM Three two fours. There we go. That's all she doing. Maybe you got some diode clamping there, have we to clamp the light? Any larger excursions? But yep, they're just doing some amplification there.

I'd be gone straight into whatever micro is being used over here chip on board. Yeah, we've got no chance of figuring out what that is. and actually I can't even see like a a JTAG interface port around that either. I would have would have expected that somewhere on the board.

No, I can't see it. so who knows. maybe they have. Um, well.

I wouldn't like to think they're spun a custom silicon for doing that. It's still like to think it's some sort of our programmable micro. but yeah, who knows. They've got the second chip on board under there and that's just got to be like a little 8-bit micro saw we just had and looks like that just handles like the interface.

So it's it's handling the inner for this big cable here. that one goes off to the the main button interface. So all this sort of stuff around here all handling the buttons. this one up here.

this cable up here is handling is going off to the stem. so it's talking via some sort of serial protocol. Off to the stem. something.

There's got to be a micro in that stem that you can't multiplex 126 or whatever buttons on the stem through that many wires. So yeah, let's crack that open. Now let's look at the stem. Apparently a hundred and two buttons I haven't counted them myself, but that's what Rama has sent this in says I'll take his word for it and yeah, you can play it.

in some expert mode or something where you can actually yeah, press all the individual buttons actually matter apparently. So as I said yeah, then cut multiplex that through the six line cable or whatever they had before. so it's most likely to be just a little board in there with a micro that handles all that and just you know, I squared, C or or something or SPI or whatever coming out to connect it through to the main processor. Let's check it out.

Here we go, let's lift the skirt and yeah, we're in like Flynn Yeah, there we go. A-ha chip on board on a daughter board that's interesting. That shows you that their budge that once again, maybe budge that from prototype into production cheaply. We've got diode on each one and then we've got some more diodes steering there perhaps.

So there you go. There's an interesting daughter board once again, chip on board to lower the cost. Absolute bare-bones even when they had to do a daughter board like this and use that as a surface mount adapter to convert it into this LCC PLCC package here. so you know they probably use like that PLC SI saket during development.

Stuff like that and well of course you know, too expensive to go into production so they just get the bare die and then they just love it in production and do the do the adapter board like that. and of course so you could work out what micro that is. They've thoughtfully label all that so. p0 you know port 0.1 and if you know you micros I don't know I Don't know that one offhand, but you know, is it a free? Scarlett Is it a renesis? Is it A TI Whatever.

You know somebody you know don't tell us in the comments exactly what is longer? Oh yeah I Know that pin out off the top of my head. It might look like there's a couple of screws missing here, but they actually line up with the ones on the back of the case there. so they're the ones are the screw through externally into there. It's just stuff.

three screws holding down this main board. Almost can't fit this on the wide screen here and but that is a buttload of membrane switches. There we go. They just got the membrane.

They've actually got those. You saw them on the other side. They've actually got little plastic pull through things that actually hold these membranes in place there. So yeah, they're all just rubber membranes.

Not least, Tactile Dome A Be sure. no, it costs way too much for tactile domes. So yeah. interesting.

Like these bigger ones actually have to just in case, because when you've got a long plunger like that, if you hit this end and you've only got the if you at this end of the button and you've only got the one in the center, it may not one single contact in the center, it may not actually make contact. so each one of those, even for the small ones. over here, they've just used two membranes, so you know, regardless of which side of the button or the middle, you know you're sort of more guaranteed to get that key press. And I'll lift the skirt on that for those playing along at home, There we go.

It looks like they got a couple of metal contacts going up to this stem up here. I Don't know what this does. Is this some sort of capacitive touch thing? We that does absolutely nothing there, just like a strengthen our bars for the end. I Guess you got people.

Yeah, threshing this damn thing trying to kill this Xbox game And you know, yeah, you don't a kill your genuine Stratocaster guitar. So yep, that's just entirely decorative does absolutely nothing. just. it's just a plastic bloody doorstop.

That's all it really is and just a bit of strengthening plate to hold the two cheap-ass plastic bits together. I Didn't see that little sucker hiding under there that looks like an illiterate mic insert. looks like there we go. So what is that get I don't know tapping on the guitar I don't know I don't know how to play this bloody rock band thing I'm too old apparently and of course it's all FCC compliant and all that sort of jazz beer just can't help but think that all of this sort of construction with all these cables flapping around in the breeze and stuff that it's not the best, you know, low EMC design possible.

So yeah, I don't know I guess they did enough tweaking to pass. So let's just probe this on the scope here and see what we can see. First of all, we'll actually probe straight off the piezo transducer there, so see what signal level we get. see what it looks like.

So I'll set that. 5 millivolts per division. I'll set my trigger level about there will single shot capture that and let me strum the string today. Look at that.

We've got all sorts of chaotic behavior up here, but then you can really see it start to resonate after. like what are we? 20 milliseconds per division? 40 50 milliseconds there it you know we start to get a the the resonant vibration of the string in the mode and it's like actually a fairly constant amplitude there which is interesting I Don't know the dynamics of guitar strings and things like that, but that would be like you know properties of these, the the plastic in there, that you know, the dynamic modal properties of the place and all that sort of stuff and then we've got some decay and then when it's still happening and going off there. but that's hey, go for you What guitar pickup aficionados I mean this is like yeah, bloody. Peas those are having transduce it with, you know, two cents slapped onto a bit of plastic with a plastic string.

Mm-hmm yeah. sacrilege. Okay, what I've got is the pickup on channel A here and on channel B I've actually got the output of the LM three to four that that one's going into. So it it's sort of just kinda.

You know it takes the major peaks there and gives some outputs and and you know, there's none of this resonant stuff in there at all. So yeah, it's just it's not quite squaring it up that's doing something there. Clearly they don't want to. Just you know, they haven't completely squared the damn thing up.

So not sure what the go is. They're obviously just getting more than just you. you plucked a string. They're getting more information than that, but to what end and how? no? I don't know.

So that's about all she wrote on the Rock Band 3 Guitar Stratocaster thingamabob. So there you go. It's like I yeah I Can't believe how sort of like which is regular sort of that prototyping this thing is I mean you know the outside molds and everything I really are quite good. but internal appearance? This is something you know looks like something you'd slap together just as a prototype.

The investors go, we were. We've got this idea for this rock band. Can you design as a guitar thing and you know you'd whack something like this together? And yeah, they've done a bit more work on the outside molds and things, but yeah, it's all just sort of slapped together like that. But you know they I don't know what sort of volumes these would have sold out, but they've known what do they sell? It was a popular game, wasn't what they might have sold.

you know, a million of these damn things. So you thought they might have optimized it a bit better. But hey, you know Labor's cheap in China Or it was. So yeah.

I'm not sure how old this thing is actually, but yes, sometimes you just don't have to optimize these things for production, just goin' to produce it. Come on, thank you very much. We've got our molds. Let's go.

so thank you very much to Rome for sending that in to the mailbag segments. An interesting look at. you know, a mass-produced consumer game Guitar? Fascinating. but you know it's pretty bare-bones stuff.

just a piezoelectric element down there cause bugger-all cost more to wire up the element than it does to, you know, buy the transducer on there. Crazy. So I hope you like that little mini teardown. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up.

You want to discuss it, jump on over to the Eevee blog forum links down below. Catch you next time you.