Circuit Bending A Musical Toy TV Remote (I thought it was a toy phone)
Once I cracked open the enclosure, I disconnected the the red and black wire from the battery compartment and reconnected it using a couple of alligator clips.
I took a small wire and just started touching different points of the circuit board. However, I was unable to locate the main chip, and realized that the black circle in the middle of the board is most likely covering it (according to the internet). It was a solid material and I tried poking at it with an exacto knife and it’s something I’m unable to remove without probably destroying the chip.
So I just continued to make different connections in hope that I could find something that would work. I found a few points that would trigger different sound effects, and finally found two points that would change the pitch of the sounds. I actually found two different pairs that I could affect the sound with a variable resistor, however, one of the connections was on a trace on the surface of the PCB, which I ended up overheating and removing.
Another effect I found was triggering a sound effect, and when I tried to attach wires, I also removed the traces. So ultimately I tried to stick to mounting it to one of through connections on the PCB. One mod was changing the pitch with a pot, and another I found could trigger one of the LED lights with a button.
So I moved to soldering those connections.
There wasn’t really a way to mount the button or potentiometer to the enclosure because of the tight space inside, so I just fed the wires through a couple of holes I drilled onto the front.
I had a hard time arranging the wires inside because of the lack of space.
I cleaned up the wiring and shortened the wires and soldered the other ends onto the potentiometer and button.
And then I struggled quite a bit tucking the wires around the circuit board in order to close and secure the enclosure.
The pitch adjustment is a little faint but you can hear it better on certain sounds, and the button flashes the left light when sounds are being played.
Bianca Gan 