By Sam Holland, product design engineer and co-founder of the informal freelance collective
Why this crossed our desks: I recently tore down the Teenage Engineering EP-40 and had an absolute blast uncovering how the team designed the series of synthesizers to simplify assembly and allow for new “flavors” to be created with a handful of color and printing tweaks. The accompanying microphone seemed worthy of a teardown as well. Teenage Engineering mentions a hidden button, which was just asking me to take it apart :)
I was eager to see if the elegant and simplistic engineering of the EP-40 carried over to the EP-2350 Ting microphone (spoiler alert: it didn’t). Let’s get to it. Also, if you are interested in the video teardown, look no further.
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The EP-2350, aka Ting, is a cute and chunky little handheld microphone. It could easily be mistaken for a kids toy or CB radio, which I think was the design goal.
Three buttons sit on the right side of the microphone. The orange button (1) is used to cycle between sound effects applied to the microphone, and a series of lights (2) cycle to indicate which effect is chosen.
Similarly, the green button (3) cycles between sounds that are triggered by pressing the white button (4). One of the onboard sounds is the classic reggaeton airhorn — a personal favorite.
The left side of the mic has a large lever (5) that, when pressed, turns on the microphone. It has a nice resistance to it, a surprising amount of travel, and a click at the end of the travel. Could this be the hidden button? 👀
Flipping the microphone to the backside, you can see a chunky belt clip (6). This clip feels lightly spring-loaded, but a bit floppy. Four PH0 screws (7) are also exposed on the backside, just begging to be removed.
The bottom of the mic has a beefy strain relief (8) for the coiled cable, which ends in a 3.5mm jack. I love coiled cables. We need more of these.
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Like the EP-40 Riddim synthesizer, this microphone has removable panels to access the AAA battery slots (1).
The top cover has some acoustic mesh glued in place (2), and reveals that the microphone (3) is actually far smaller than it may appear at first glance.
The bottom cover hides a dial for adjusting the microphone sensitivity (4) as well as a reset button (5) and USB-C port (6).
Compliance information seems to be laser-etched onto the housing (7).
The microphone can be powered directly from this USB-C port, but it’s primarily used to connect to a web app for modifying how the microphone works. This is where things get cool, and weird.
I found it interesting that this device is made in Vietnam while the synth is made in Spain. Seems like these devices may be more like cousins than siblings.
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Unlike the EP-40, only five screws (1) stand between me and the guts of this device.
The rear housing separates easily, revealing an interesting stack up of foam tape (2), which I think was added later to help reduce any unwanted vibrations from the housing.
Strategically placed Kapton tape (3) seems to reduce the friction between the microphone lever and the rear housing, which also feels like it was added last minute. I also spy two more screws (4) to take off, which probably hold the belt clip assembly in place.
Inside, we get our first look at the circuit board. Four more screws (5) hold the board in place and make connection with the battery terminals. I also see two soldered wires (6) for the microphone element and a connector for the 3.5mm headphone cable (7) to plug into the microphone.
Great news here! If you damage your cable, you can swap in a new one in a matter of minutes with just a screwdriver. The soldered wires are a bit concerning though. I never like to see these.
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When inspecting the circuit board, a certain logo stood out to me immediately!
It seems like this EP-2350 is powered by none other than a Raspberry Pi 2350. (RP2350A0A2, if you wanna get specific). This is a first for me, as I typically associate Raspberry Pi with low-cost Linux computers used mainly for prototyping or industrial projects, not consumer electronics. The 2350 is a powerful little microcontroller which gives the Ting microphone it’s quirky abilities and naming convention.
Yes, this microphone can be used as a simple mic. But it can also add effects to the audio based on input from an onboard accelerometer and the position of the lever, letting you get pretty crazy. Furthermore, you can adjust how the microphone behaves using the aforementioned web app, all thanks to this Raspberry Pi.
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The lever that’s used to turn on and off the microphone has a lot more going on than I initially expected. Mechanically, it has four components including the lever itself (1), a machined metal hub (2), a torsion spring (3), and a molded plastic spacer (4). Electrically, it has three ways of sensing the position of the lever. One switch (5) detects when the lever is depressed at all. Another switch (6) is triggered when the lever is fully depressed. The pivot point of the lever is actually a potentiometer (7), which is a fancy way of saying it senses rotation.
I think we’ve found our “secret button”! It’s triggered when you press the lever all the way down. I think the other button is used to actually wake up the microcontroller here, and it’ll enter sleep mode after a few minutes of inactivity. The rotation sensor is used for fun — you can map the intensity of sound effects to the lever position. Wild and complicated!
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Here’s my attempt at illustrating how these three sensors work together: