The xtractaur mod

This is the latest toy from Mattel, whereby you buy the starter kit, which resembles a DNA gun. You then insert it onto a toy dinosaur and "extract" its DNA. Then you go online and do something to it. What it was, I am not sure as I've lost the plot already. What is so interesting is that this little toy which resembles a small futuristic gun or another variation of Men in Black's Cricket, take your pick.

The thing is, this design is ripe for modification. But an asking price of USD27.90 and another USD32 for postage, I can't afford one. Really. I can't afford one. Because if I translate it to my currency, its about MYR107.85, which is quite significant to my take-home pay.

Anyway, let's take a look a the circuit. Since I do not have the toy itself, I cannot show you the pictures (but one day, if it comes here, that is) but for those who have seen them on the Forum, chances are, you'll know what I am talking about.

USB Connections
AS we can see from the pictures, the end of the gun is actually a USB cable. And so, lets take a look at the USB cable itself.


There are four connectors:
1 - RED - 5volts
2 - GREEN - Data
3 - WHITE - Data
4 - BLACK - Ground

Which is which, that is the problem. By looking at the circuit board, you would notice by now that there are actually five cables instead of four. They are RED, GREEN, WHITE, BLACK & BLACK (marked R, G, W, B1, B2 respectively). Here, we are assuming that the Toy gun's wiring cable is following the colour cables of an actual USB cable. Hoping to be lucky, I would say, the RED cable is where you connect the 5 volts, and the Black cable is where you connect the Ground cable. Please be aware that the replacement voltage must not exceed 5 volts as the USB power from the PC is 5 volts. Chances are, if you exceed it, it might go bye-bye.

So, now all you have to do is to stack three coin cell batteries to get 4.5 volts. It might not be much but hopefully, it will work. I am proposing using the coin cell batteries because I think they are small enough to fit into the rear barrel of the gun. And you just have to modify the black plug there to become a twist open cover to replace the batteries. Some torchlight pens have their own removeable battery compartment like the one shown below:

This is an example of how you stack the batteries together.
I took this from a UV detector pen and converted it to a Wii
Infra-red pen for a friend. But if you do see something like
this, all you have to do is to remove the LED and the switch,
(the resistor is my own soldering) connect the spring and
slip a piece of wife to the front (like where one of the LED's
leg is doing).

B1 or B2?
Unfortunately, the photos did not show the underside (and magnified) of the circuit, so I too, cannot determine which to connect the ground cable to.

WARNING! DANGER! WILL ROBINSON! DANGER!
OK, by now, you would have realised that the points above are all in theory since I do not have the gun. So, its matter to who is brave enough to try connecting the new power battery cables to it.

The circuit board in a nutshell. Although you can remove
the needle part, I am not sure what you can do with it as
the only thing I can think of is to put more LEDs there &
turn the metal jack into a clear resin piece........

OK, how about this?
if you're still adamant about taking out the whole circuit board, its also a good idea but make sure the switch (behind the trigger) is there for you to use. You can cut the wires and connect them to a simple LED circuit instead. But because I am not sure of the gun's dimension, I have to assume the grip area is very slim and the only type of battery is those flat "J" types which gives 12 volts, I think. And if you successfully got it in, you have to cut out a cover for it when you need to change batteries.

Wow. Its three in the morning and I hope I am not talking crap. I can't even remember what I typed earlier or am I making sense.........

[Update 09092009 1030]

Whoa! This is huge! I so want one!
[OH, OK, so I can't afford one]
Picture taken from gearmedia.ign.com