bout to start prototyping a thing i've been thinking about for years. it's dumb, you're gonna love it. Or some of you will, idk how many will get the joke. but anyway step one is rippin this lil guy open and seeing how its guts work

Interesting! I was definitely expecting either velostat or two separated soft conductive materials. I was *not* expecting these rorschach blobs. Note that the two sides are similar, but different

It makes sense, though. There are 10 total signal wires for ~17(?) buttons. If you did what I was expecting, you'd need 2 wires for every single button - one sending low voltage, one completing the circuit back to the board.

But this asymetrical blob structure is clever. It's a matrix (or array? i forget the technical term) similar to a keyboard or anything else with lots and lots of inputs. The green wire on the left connects to a blob that would *seem* to span two buttons.

But on the opposite side of the foam, the red wire connects to the sax blob, while the orange wire connects to the piano blob. So instead of testing per-wire, we say "is it green and red or green and orange?". Allowing for maximum contact area with minimal pin usage and wires

For my purposes, at least for this project, I really only care about snagging two pairs of contacts and their foam. But I'll keep the rest, I can think of many ways it could come in handy! Anyway that's all I have time for tonight. Maybe I'll add more to this thread tomorrow.