Journey Through the DS
Proto-Knights
Entry ID #: 2012
Created: Thu, Jan 7, 2016 12:43 PM
The electronic piece our group disassembled was a DSi, we chose because we thought the Nintendo DSi was not too simple or complicated making a nicely rounded project. The DSi is a Nintendo device made for handheld gaming. It's the third generation of the original DS. It can go on the Internet and is able to download games. With 2 screens (one allowing touch interaction and the other being only a display interface),a stylus for the touch screen, and a set of buttons including the directional pad, L and R bumpers, and the A, B, Y, and X buttons allowing you to interact with the game. There is a microphone and camera allowing interaction with certain games as well as making recordings. The camera is a new feature added to the DSi, the DS lite did not have one. It also has an SD slot for storing and extending the memory on the device. The game system has a card reader which allows for you to insert games to play. The main parts of the DSi that allow anything to happen are the lithium-ion rechargeable 3.7 volt battery, battery PCB, logic board (including all its smaller parts), and the ribbon cables. The ribbon cables are for hard drives, unfortunately it interferes with cooling by disrupting airflow within the case. The ribbon cable connectors are called female DIN 41612 connectors, they avoid thermal shock. For starters the DSi wouldn’t even run without a battery and the battery would be extremely unsafe without the battery PCB . The battery gives power to everything in the DSi, the battery PCB regulates the battery and therefore keeps the battery from overcharging, over-discharging, over-draining, and generally keeps it from exploding. The logic board contains the Nintendo CPU ARM, the Samsung flash memory chip, the Fujitsu RAM chip, and the Texas Instrument logic gate. The logic board does everything necessary to the DSi, process games, read microphone sound or camera files. The CPU ARM and other sockets in the logic board are made up of many microprocessors. The smaller parts of the logic board, the pic(programmable intelligent computer) chips, are simple processors that have many attributes such as separate code and data spaces, stores arithmetic and logic. The next layer of the bottom housing contains the digitizer which allows the DSi touch screen capabilities to work. In the pivot housing, the ribbon cables are stored along with the camera and microphone components. The Pivot housing also contains the the directional pad and the A, B, Y, and X buttons. The camera, microphone, and ribbon cables all run through the pivot point of the panels which keeps them from bending, stretching, or being disfigured. The pivot housing contains the cover for the top display screen and the digitizer for the bottom display screen. The pivot panel contains the speakers, connected to the ribbon cables, which allow you to hear what is happening in the game. Connected to the pivot panel is the top housing. The top housing contains many important pieces that connect to the pivot point through ribbon cables, but is very simple compared to the bottom housing. The top housing contains the camera cover which covers the camera. The camera itself is partially in both the pivot and top housing, and allows you to take pictures or video, then play it back with sound from the microphones all thanks to the logic board. What we’ve learned is that internal components are more fragile than we thought they would be; the battery PCB is one such example. We also learned that many electronics are not meant to be opened or tampered with. Throughout the experiment we have found that the DSi has many more small parts than we expected it to have. The DSi is a rather complex device and has taught us a lot about electronics and how they work through this experiment. While this project was not too simple or too complicated it did pose a challenge to us as a group while we worked on this. DSI components laid out Logic Board Battery Pack Battery PCB Texas Instrument Samsung Flash Fujitsu Logic Gate Memory Chip RAM Chip Nintendo CPU ARM