Reverse Engineering: Controller: December 2009

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

All Wired Up

Today Maddi found out her family had sold the PS2 Dualshock controllers so we couldn't start taking them apart. I started working on this website while she found more information for the proposal we wrote. I started to add the information she added to make the proposal better and she found some great websites that had pictures of taken apart controllers that I will post on the right side. We only have a few more classes to work on this and many of the other teams have already started. Some things we expect to find are transistors, a printed circuit board, a normal circuit board, diodes, controllers, capacitors, conduction, insulation, and protection. Also we expect the controller to be made mostly out of plastic on the outside and metal/alloys in the inside.

Proposal for PS1 Controller

What product will you study?

We will study a PlayStation 1 Controller

What brand?

The brand is Sony.

What is your product designed to do?

The product is designed to control the actions of a character in a video game.

Why did you decide to choose it?

We chose it in order to see what parts allow the controller to make the characters function. Also, in order to see why Sony chose the parts they did in order for the controller to work.

What circuitry components do you think you will have to learn about to understand your product?

We will probably have to learn about transistors, diode, circuit board, controls, capacitor, conduction, protection, and insulation.

Upon doing research and finding pictured of the parts, we found a diagram of how the analog stick works. There is also both a circuit board and a printed circuit board. We also need to understand what makes the buttons pressure-sensitive, and we need to find out why the controllers are able to vibrate.

What materials is it made out of?

The controller is made out of mostly of plastic for the outside with some metals and alloys for the inner components such as the circuit board.