The motivation. I have a home theatre room with a couch and central chair where I do most of my gaming. Unfortunately the Guitar Hero
controller's wire is just too damned short. That and when I really get into it I like rocking out and usually end up ripping the wire right out of my PS2.
So there's the motivation; it's awesome and I couldn't find a FAQ for the wireless controller I used. Which btw is the Logitech one. I figure if Sony endorsed it, it's going to not suck and if I'm gonna risk ripping my GH controller apart and trashing it's board I want it to rock (no pun intended). Also Logitech pretty much rules for making input devices, if you think Microsoft is better I've got news for you; there is no Santa Claus, nor is there an Easter Bunny. Wake up you delusional man child.
I was in a rush to get this done until I realized it wasn't gonna happen in one night for reasons I'll share with you later. Reasons I hope you can avoid after reading this. Logitech decided to make my life harder by soldering the analog sticks right onto the main board. I found a simple solution after trying to solder off the 14 points of contact each stick has with the board with. And that is to simply go at them with a pair of sturdy and appropriately fine wire cutters. Yup just cut the bastards off. If you're feeling vengeful you can get some pliers and soldering iron and pull the remnants off. I started to cook the surrounding plastic half way through so I decided to just leave them on.
Once you got the case open and pulled the board out and all the plastic induction buttons off you'll notice a couple dog ear looking mini boards coming off the sides for the shoulder buttons. Cut the L2/L1 board off right at the main board, you won't be needing it. The right one however is more essential. Leave it on we'll get to it later. Cut off the rumble pack motors, solder or cut the wires off too. They are not welcome here. Next cut the battery terminals that are sticking up in the air, daring to short your board, as is a batteries want. Once again you can solder them off if you want to make the whole thing cleaner. They're suspended in giant globs of solder so cutting the wires off at the solder is really as good as it gets. Also keep in mind they're fairly close to the main chip on the board; I learned in university that microchips hate soldering irons. It's an ancient conflict that dates back to the Kindling wars, when the irons drove the chips from the face of the earth, forcing them underground until the last century.
As for the battery, you'll need a battery holder with leads. I prefer detachable leads (pictured below, far below) as you'll be needing to cut and reapply the power several times when you test this. Unless you trust that you can follow this guide from beginning to end, plug it in and have it all work. If so, you trust my work far more than I did and you'll likely die a fools death.
Now comes one of those little bits of information I couldn't find online that I had to figure out myself. If you want to play Guitar Hero with a normal
controller this is how it would work:
D-pad up/down = strum up/down
R2 = green fret
circle = red fret
triangle = yellow fret
square = orange fret
X = blue fret
left analog up and down = whammy bar (with some offset which I didn't bother figuring out, works well enough)
Start = start
Select = select/star power
**Left D-pad always held down.
Now comes the not so fun part but I'll give you a crib. This controller does not use a common live or ground or, if it does, 4 hours with a multimeter and 5-year computer engineering degree couldn't find it. Each button will have to be connected to it's own isolated circuit switch. I know, I cried too, mostly because no one told me. Here's the good news; every lead that needs to be attached can be attached to the back of the board where a convenient solder point can be found. Oh yeah and leave the leads open for the Left D-pad, you'll need to put that on a switch, not just short it. I'll tell why later. Also solder off the LED and attach leads to it's terminals if you want an external indicator on your controller when you're done. I did, and it increases the "f'ing metal" factor of your controller by an order of magnitude. And it lets you know when your controller is on and working. One last thing I'll mention; the shoulder board for R2. You can see a resistor between the return trace and the contact trace. This resistor is there for a reason, don't bypass it, it will fuck up your day. Good news; the other side of the R2 trace goes straight to the main board, so just connect straight to the big sloppy solder point provided. I found that weak grey rubber 34 gauge 3-wire deal to be really flimsy and eventually broke on it's own anyway. I replaced it with my own copper wire and glued it down. Slept better that night for it. You can see the right shoulder board in the full case pic below (far below) so you get an idea of what I did.
Bad news again, I didn't take any pictures of the board before I glue gunned it. I'll atone for this deficiency when Guitar Hero 2 comes out and I mod my red controller. For now you'll have to do a little trailblazing with a continuity tester. Just hold one end on the gold induction contact on the top of the board and start tapping stuff on the back. Hear a beep and you're golden, do it again with the other top contact; you've got your circuit. To cut down on time a bit you might want to follow the traces to likely point of contact on the back. Use whatever kind of wire you like. I used Cat-5 Ethernet cable because, well I've got a whole box of it, it's cheap and I know it's high quality. If it can carry 1Gbps over 100ft, it can bridge a switch over 6 inches. Though really any appropriately small insulated copper wire will do. Grab your tester, soldering iron, and go hard. See ya in a couple hours. I'm going for a smoke...
Back. If you've succeeded you now have a wireless controller board that looks something like a raver sea urchin having a bad hair day. Admire it, you've done well. If I were you, I'd plug it in and start up Guitar hero, make sure it works. See if you can play I love rock and role on Easy by tapping wires. It brings the game to a whole new level and keeps you motivated cause you know that, so far, your project works and you haven't committed a mighty kludge on a $60 controller. Oh and don't forget to tie together the Left D-pad leads. That's how GHero knows you're playing a genuine controller. I give props to the guy that did the other how2. I didn't figure that shit out myself and in retrospect it would have driven me ape shit trying to figure it out.
Once you get bored, or frustrated cause you wrecked your $60 controller (nub), you can move to ripping apart your yet untouched Guitar controller and seriously committing yourself to this project. Here's where you get to benefit from my experience again. Unscrew the housing, open the whole deal up.
There's a big board in the middle under the strum switches, it's got all manner of wiring coming into it. Cut them all off as near to the board as possible. It's new goal in life is to be a holder for two switches. But we'll get to that later.
Remember how I said the buttons don't have a common ground or hot? Well this is where it comes into play and we get to do some fine modification of the board. Look up, waaay up. There we are.
You'll see the fret buttons, unscrew them and pull those grey buttons off them. They're all the same so no need to remember which one goes where. You'll see 6 wires in the cable but five buttons on the board, they do share a common ground (or hot, who knows, who cares; won't matter in a few seconds.) Get out your Swiss army knife or appropriate substitute for a fine scraping tool. You're going to be scraping the plastic off that common bus in between each button. Keep in mind we're only making 4 connections, the 5th one is already there for us. I cleaned them with acetone after I scraped them but I'm not sure that's really necessary. All for the glory of a good solder. Once you've got a nice clean bit of metal exposed, about big enough to, oh I dunno, solder a piece of copper wire onto, you can whip out your favorite fine cutting tool. We're gonna slash a big chunk out of the bus in between each solder point and the next button down the line. I used my Swiss army knife to do this, it sucked (see pic directly below. The other 3 cuts are hidden under the grey button skirts, but they all look more or less like the one on the right.). I found out later that a slight touch from a cutoff wheel on a rotary tool does the job faster and cleaner than my hack and slash method. You also run a lesser risk of stabbing yourself. Either way, verify the leads are indeed electrically isolated. Grab one of the buttons and test that each lead does in fact connect with it's according wire when the button is depressed. Better safe than having to revisit a board you long since thought you were done with and, for the most part, have forgotten about. Once you're convinced this all works throw some hot glue on it (soldering a loose wire to a paper thin bus line isn't exactly 'sturdy' on it's own.) If everything I've said in this paragraph has confused you; you're basically making 5 dip switches, figure it out.
Now back to the board formerly known as main in the guitar housing. Pictured below you'll see dead center between the two pairs of leads is a crescent shaped dent in the board. I love my Dremel, I wish I thought of using it sooner. You can kind of see under the glue on the top pair, two similar light brown crescents. This isolates the strum switches from the rest of the board. The outside switches are actually connected as my not working controller attested before I went at it with the continuity tester. Like I said, this is now nothing more than a mounting board for two dip switches. Solder your up and down D-pad buttons to the top and bottom switches (double check you've got the right leads and switches you'll be in lefty-switch mode for the rest of your wireless days.) Glue it up and we're on to the start/select buttons.
Remember the weird bus soldering/cutting trick we did with the fret buttons? Do it again for the start button.
At this point you're probably wondering what that weird little board sitting off to the side by it's lonesome with a bunch of capacitor looking deals on it is. Well my friend, that's the star power sensor. Ever wonder what allowed you trigger star power by tilting your controller? me too, that's it. Anyway, there's likely an elaborate way of signaling star power to the game, however the simple one is hitting select, so pull the leads coming off that weird little board and solder them to the select button leads on your wireless controller board. I used heat shrink tube cause it looks pro and pretty much guarantees the solder will never break or will stay connected if it does. If you're not that well equipped/committed use electrical tape or hot glue (messy and looks like shit but is probably the sturdiest of all three options.) Also by putting that wire for the start ground on the bottom it'll no longer be flush with the top of button cylinders. You'll need to Dremel down the inside edge a bit and probably the screw post as well. Just experiment till you get a good fit, last thing you want is to take out a big chunk that makes your start button stick or wiggle.
Solder and wrap the fret buttons to the according button as shown in the legend at the top of this page.
The whammy bar pot. I know damn well it has an offset that needs to be adjusted for with a resistor. I don't know this value and I didn't feel like finding out. If anyone knows please e-mail me it and I'll throw it on the FAQ. For now, just solder the center post to the center post on the wireless board, and put the outside ones on the outside. Since the analog swings both ways, so to speak, the whammy bar works pretty well. You can see both of these hook ups in the picture below.
If my cable gaffing (routing) looks like crap that's cause I did nearly none. This mod could be done a lot cleaner if all the wires were cut to length. At that point the novelty had worn off and the idea of re cutting all the wires and dripping solder onto the internals made me want to cut myself. That and I just wanted to play Cheat on the Church again. So on to a few essential finishing touches.
Remember the Left D-pad that needs to be held down for the game to recognize your inputs? Well leaving it bridged will drain your controllers battery. So we use a switch, get a small single pole switch and stick it in the hole your cord used to be in (top left of above image). I managed to find one that fit perfectly. If you get stuck with one that's too small well wow, you've done something impressive. Get your glue gun. If it's too big, a Dremel and an engraving bit or a file will set you free.
The Logitech controller comes with a very nifty but very small and dim LED. I mentioned earlier that you attach leads to it's terminal and get rid of the original LED. I myself used an Ultra-brite Red LED, to increase the metal factor. It uses a little more power but LEDs are the most efficient light creating electronic device yet discovered by man, you're not gonna feel it in your battery life. I Dremeled out a hole for it just above the whammy bar and stuck it in a mount. Looks awesome and lets me know how my controllers doing. Also lights up my fingers red while I play: metal.
Next is a battery mount. I glued mine down with hot glue on either end so I could still get the batteries out without ripping the whole thing out. the mount I got has a hand detachable set of leads. Find these if you can, well worth it.
Do a final test to make sure everything works as it should. Try a fast song you know really well. Crossroads on hard was my litmus, works like a damn. Glue everything down so it's not wiggling around and you're done! Happy rocking!
Rovon is a hardware engineer with a Bachelors of Engineering in Computer Engineering from UVic. Computer and electronics mods are a long time hobby.
rovon2501@hotmail.com