Pleo Teardown

Teardown

Teardown

Teardowns provide a look inside a device and should not be used as disassembly instructions.

Featured Guide

Featured Guide

This guide has been found to be exceptionally cool by the iFixit staff.

  • Add Note x

We disassembled this dinosaur on January 14, 2008.

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Add Note Edit Step 1 — Pleo Teardown  ¶ 

  • We received our Pleo this week, and resisted the urge to take him apart-- but only briefly.

  • We immediately bonded to the little dinosaur. This was the most difficult take apart we've ever done. Disassembling inanimate iPods is one thing, but Pleo was more. Ah, Pleo-- we hardly knew you.

  • Warning: This guide is not for the squeamish. If violence to robotic creatures causes you emotional distress, stop reading now.

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Add Note Edit Step 2  ¶ 

  • The obvious place to begin disassembling any organism is the belly. Pleo has two screws on each foot.

  • The battery compartment is in the middle, along with the the USB port and SD slot. There's also a debug port hidden underneath a cover next to the power switch.

  • Pleo came with a USB cable, but it's not clear what it's intended for. Ugobe's instructions for add-ons like their Holiday behavior require a SD card and reader.

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Add Note Edit Step 3  ¶ 

  • Once we removed the feet, we cut the glue affixing the skin to the legs.

  • Pleo is quite the sophisticated creature. According to Howstuffworks, he has:

    • Two 32-bit ARM7 processors

    • Four 8-bit processors (ARM?) for motor control

    • Fourteen tiny motors

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Add Note Edit Step 4  ¶ 

  • Removing the skin from the head. Ugobe used glue around each orifice to keep the skin secure, so this is trickiest part.

  • Pleo may be the most interactive toy ever made. He has:

    • One color camera

    • Two microphones

    • One IR transmitter

    • One accelerometer

    • Eight capacitance touch sensors

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Add Note Edit Step 5  ¶ 

  • Removing glue around his eye.

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Add Note Edit Step 6  ¶ 

  • The color camera in his nose. Ugobe may have originally planned facial recognition, but currently Pleo can only use it to "get a feel of his surroundings."

  • He also sports binaural hearing with a microphone on each side of his head. The microprocessor compares the sounds received from each "ear" and allows him to work out the direction and distance of sound sources.

  • An infrared interrupter in his mouth lets him know if you have placed something in there. There is also an IR communicator which allows him to talk to other, like-minded dinosaurs.

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Add Note Edit Step 7  ¶ 

  • Removing the skin from his legs and torso. The skin is elastic enough that the entire body section can be removed as one piece.

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Add Note Edit Step 8  ¶ 

  • Stretching the skin around his rear legs.

  • Pleo's skin is loose over most of his body, but there are stiff plastic frames surrounding the ports and battery bay on his belly.

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