Evelands Dot Net

While clearly not as cool as a Mr. T in your pocket, the Easy button in a monster of a push button. It's sole purpose in life it to say how easy things are when pressed. As such it's got a speaker, batteries and other assorted goodies that I didn't need. What I needed to keep was the mechanical switch part and the housing of the button. The idea was to stip as much out of the button in order to make room to fit the PCB from the keyboard.

After removing the battery cover and the batteries, use a small flat bladed screwdriver to pry off the rubber feet from the bottom of the button. There are four small phillips head screws holding the top and bottom half of the button together. Keep these for later as the button skates around flat surfaces without these.

Once the screws are removed, the button dome and the grey ring that holds it in place will come off. There are three main plastic bits; the button dome, the base and the grey ring. There are two plastic ridges on the dome itself that will align it when placed in the ring. This makes sure that the four plastic legs from the button dome line up with the four holes in the PCB next to the switch. These legs are pushed back up by a metal 'spring' that sits under the PCB, returning it when it's pressed.

The top PCB holds the microprocessor (under the black blob of epoxy), the switch in the center and assorted components. The only thing that will end up being used in the circuit is the switch itself. There are four wires coming off the PCB that can be desoldered or snipped. The red wires go to the speaker, the white and black to the battery compartment. The PCB is held in place by two screws on either side. Once there are removed, the metal spring lifts off.

A flat plastic piece held in by two screws forms the floor of the metal spring and the top of the speaker/battery compartment area. The metal spring sits on this piece with the PCB supported above the spring by the two plastic posts on each side of the screws.

The very bottom of the base holds the speaker, the battery compartment and two weights on either side. After removing the hot glue holding the speaker in place, I cut about half of the battery compartment out. The left shows everything in place, the right shows the compartment cut to make space for the keyboard PCB. If need be, the entire battery compatment could be cut away and the battery cover just glued in place.

Next I needed to find where on the PCB I could solder my wires to. I needed a wire on both sides of the switch that would connect to the keyboard PCB. Luckily, there is a solder point on the inside of the capacitor and an unused gold solder hole directly on the other side of the switch. I got out the continuity tester and verified that those spots would work. On the left, testing both spots with the button open; on the right with the button closed.

I desoldered the capacitor and soldered a wire from the underside of the PCB to where the capacitor had been. I then soldered another wire from the bottom through the unused solder hole on the other side. If it had turned out that there wasn't a solder hole that went through the board, I would have either routed the wires over the top of the board or drilled a hole through the board, scrapped off some of the green plastic to expose the copper trace and soldered to that.