360 S-controller WIP, Not too Duke, Not too 360, Just right...for some Options

[RDC]

After stuffing a Wireless CG board into a Duke I thought doing an S-controller with one of the new Wired CL boards would be a suitable follow up, because I'm not stuffing a Wireless one in there for anything. That CL controller can be hacked down to pretty much nothing (2in. x 1-1/4in.) and stuffed in almost whatever to make a 360 controller with very little to rebuild on it to get it working again, just 2 wires minus the Rumble circuitry and even it can be added back on externally fairly easily.



Right now all of the main things are done, all that's left to do is straighten out the throw of the Sticks (they don't have as much movement as in a 360 shell so they're acting sluggish) the Guide button, Rumble motors, Headset connector and LEDs, and the 3 latter can be done without if one were so inclined, I'm not, but ya could.

This was done over just a couple of days, lot of it staring at the thing figuring out what to do, guess that's the hard part though. It's nowhere near as difficult as that beast of a Duke controller is to do. (I haven't touched that one in 5 months but dug it out the other day and started doing some more work on it)

The lower memory card slot of course will be tossed on this thing, top one will probably be covered as well and the headset jack installed there. Not sure where or how I'll do the Guide button and LEDs on this one, still thinking on a good Guide button setup for the Duke as well, using some small tact switch just doesn't cut it for me there.

[360 hAcKaH]

Looks great so far, keep it up I actually prefer the 360 controller over the Duke controller but I suppose thats just a comfort thing.

[RDC]

OK, the Rumble motors are all wired up now and work, so that part is done with. Had to rebuild that part of the circuit, just a Transistor and a Diode for each one is all.



Here's another shot of it with the bottom of the shell in place. This thing is a beater until I get all the kinks worked out, then in a decent looking shell it'll go.

[tlamb]

is the CL board you added from a 360 controller? whats Cl stand for?

[RDC]

is the CL board you added from a 360 controller? whats Cl stand for?

Yes, it's the newer version of the 360 Wired controller. I coined it 'CL' because it has a Common Line for all of the buttons, it's not ground it's voltage, so calling it a common ground controller would have been misleading and just flat out wrong. The newer version of Wireless controller though does uses a Common Ground, so it's referred to as the 'CG' version, though it's Triggers are bass ackwards of the other 3 types. Both of the older versions of controllers use a 'Matrix' type of setup that's just a mess. You can see more info on them all in the Tutorials section.

[BerT69]

oh wow...here he goes again. YOU GO BROTHER

[hecz]

Im looking forward to this.

[Bullseye789]

hey man; well, I'll start off by saying thank you. This project has been much awaited by me.
Now, I will ask you some questions because I plan on doing the same thing with a wired 360 controller.
I created this same message a lil bit ago but it got erased on accident and was much longer than I intend this one to be. So I'll shorten it up
- please reply

1. Is this possible to do without having to create neww buttons?
2. which parts of the s controller case do I need to cut out and which do I need to keep for the 360 controller buttons?
3. can't I literally just take the s controller casing and put it around the 360 controller guts; and still have a guide button in the same spot, etc?

Sorry to bother, and thanks

PS. You will enjoy this shorter version reply much better than my long one that got erased accidentally

[RDC]

To answer your questions quickly...

1. Nothing new has to be made, the buttons in this controller are the ones from the S-controller.

2. The only things that need to be cut out are the bottom memory card slot and 1/4 of the brace that supports the D-pad, because of where the CL board sits, it's in the bottom half of the shell.

3. Not without doing a LOAD of work, that was my original intent for this when I started it over a year ago, but that method really bites.


Now to be a little more detailed...


1. The S-controller is pretty much intact. What I do is remove all of the components from the S-controller's board, so I'm left with a circuit board that has the original S-controller's button contacts and all, it's really just a place holder for everything that has the button contacts in the right places, all that is lined up and ya know it will fit, because it did before. Then traces are cut and rewired where need be to fit with the different wiring setup of the 360 CL board.

2. The ABXY buttons in my controller are the ones from the S-controller, Back/Start are already there and used. The only thing that needs to be added in somewhere is the Guide button and you can pretty much do whatever fancies ya there. The only things that need to be trimmed down are what I mentioned above so the boards fit in the controller. However you decided to do your Guide button may or may not need to have more removed, I haven't decided on how I'll do this one yet, too busy with the PS360 controller, but I'm sure something else will need to be tossed when I do get back around to it.


3. The ABXY buttons, D-pad and Sticks do all line up perfectly with the S-controller shell, but then you have a royal mess to get the Triggers installed and have to do do something with the Black and white buttons, plus the Headset connector and Guide button. It's just too much of a hassle to go about it that way and you'll be fabricating this and that to even get it half working.

[Garrett.19]

Do you have a picture of where you made your cuts on the 360 controller circuit board to make it that small i am planning on putting it in the S-Controller just was wondering where to make the cuts to make the board smaller. Also is the the newest edition of the 360 controller or can all of them be cut that small? Thanks in advance.

[RDC]

Do you have a picture of where you made your cuts on the 360 controller circuit board to make it that small i am planning on putting it in the S-Controller just was wondering where to make the cuts to make the board smaller. Also is the the newest edition of the 360 controller or can all of them be cut that small? Thanks in advance.

It must be the 360 Wired CL version of the board, no other 360 controller board can be cut down this small by a long shot, and as far as Wireless goes, see my 360Duke Controller if you want to see how small the CG wireless board can get, but it's nothing in comparison to this and the amount of trace rebuilding that has to be done to the CG (and CG2) ones are insane compared to this CL one. The older style 'Matrix' boards would be even worse if you were to try it with them also.

Here is the max amount of the board you can cut out and still have a functional board after a 1 wire rebuild. If you want both Rumble circuits to be intact as well a little more work is required, 1 wire for the Heavy Rumble and then more work for the Light Rumble that's covered later. You can of course cut outside these lines and have it be any size bigger than this, but this is the smallest you can cut it down to and not have a real mess to rebuild on it.



Make sure you use 30AWG wire at most, anything bigger than that and you'll run out of room and have a real mess real fast.

The one trace rebuild is a wire that goes from a trace to TP23 and that's it for that part. To rebuild the Heavy Rumble circuit you'll need to prep a couple of Vias and solder in another wire.



This is what the board looks like after being cut down and rebuilt.



One more thing, if you don't plan on using the headset jack at all and you remove it from the board you need to install a jumper wire between 2 points. If you leave it installed you don't need the jumper wire, but if you remove it and don't wire up some other headset jack there you do need the jumper wire installed or a Wireless Headset will never sync up with the controller because it will always 'think' a Wired Headset is plugged in.




After the trace rebuild you have access to every line for every function of the controller on that tiny board in one spot or another and then it's just a matter of soldering a wire to the right Trace/TP spot for what you want. Practice up on soldering to traces if you aren't proficient at it, and if you've never tried it then don't until you've practiced a ton on something else that you don't mind messing up on. This thing will be in such a state that if you mess up in most places even once you'll be arsed out or have a very tough time getting the problem resolved.

EDIT: More info on the Rumble motor circuit if you still want to have that feature.

The Heavy Rumble circuit is still on the board with it cut this way, it just needs that Black wire above soldered in place, then you just need to solder the motor wires up to the leads on the Diode (D6) that's still there.

The Light Rumble circuit has to be rebuilt and it's a pretty simple setup, just a Diode and NPN Transistor. The + side of the motor connects straight to the 5v line of the controller (wherever as long as it's on that 5v line) and then the Light Rumble signal line from the board (The Via at R8) is what turns on the Transistor (Base) which then turns the Ground on to the Rumble motor. So on the Transistor it's Emitter goes to Ground, Collector to the - side of the Rumble motor and the Base goes to the Via at R8. The Diode gets installed Anode to the Emitter of the Transistor and the Cathode to the 5v line of the controller. You can either desolder and use the original Transistor and Diode or use any general purpose ones.

This post has been edited by RDC: Jul 25 2010, 08:28 PM

[RDC]

Just a little update. I've closed off the bottom memory card slot and will use the top one for just the headset connector. Stuck a 1/4" stereo jack in an old memory card so it at least looks the part. Yes I know the majority of headsets are 2.5mm, that's what adapters are for, plus I wasn't waiting to order up a closed circuit one online since it's needed for the controller to 'know' if a headset is plugged in or not.


The flash on the camera really did a number on the color differences, they really don't look that much different, but ya sure can't tell it from these pics. Plus I'm not a painter, so if ya hate it yer not alone.

This is just a test shell also, the big hole in the center there was to see what the Guide button looked like and I personally didn't care for it.





This post has been edited by RDC: Jun 7 2008, 11:00 PM

[leorimolo]

Amazing.

Great work on this project very clean and professional

[SupaDawg]

I'm not one to often bump threads, but what ever happened with this one RDC? I'd love to see how things turned out, as I've been considering something similar myself.

[RDC]

It was actually sold quite awhile back and I've been meaning to start in on another one and pick up where this one left off. I never really did decide on a good RoL and Guide button idea that I liked before someone really wanted this one and I've been busy with other projects and such so another one just never was started in on. This one here just ended up with a tact switch for the Bumpers and Guide button, so apart from having those and a gray cable it didn't really look much different than an S-controller when it was done.








If I ever get into another one I'll be sure to dig this thread up then as well.