HowTo Mod Guncon2 with Aimtraks

[penguinpc]

I have desoldered the wires, but pulled up one of the traces (I believe that is the correct term) in doing so.

Am I screwed?  Will I have to buy another gun and start over?


guncon by Alvis Elledge, on Flickr

[nox771]

I have desoldered the wires, but pulled up one of the traces (I believe that is the correct term) in doing so.

Am I screwed?  Will I have to buy another gun and start over?

For what you show that doesn't look like too big a deal.  Does the trace only go to the through hole?  Usually for something like that I would take an X-acto knife and lightly scrape off the solder mask (the blue coating) to expose some of the trace and then solder a wire to the exposed trace (if bending or wire strain is a concern I would probably use something flexible like a thin gauge stranded wire).

[penguinpc]

I have desoldered the wires, but pulled up one of the traces (I believe that is the correct term) in doing so.

Am I screwed?  Will I have to buy another gun and start over?

For what you show that doesn't look like too big a deal.  Does the trace only go to the through hole?  Usually for something like that I would take an X-acto knife and lightly scrape off the solder mask (the blue coating) to expose some of the trace and then solder a wire to the exposed trace (if bending or wire strain is a concern I would probably use something flexible like a thin gauge stranded wire).

The trace only goes to the hole labeled "u". So I may try what you said. Maybe I could reconnect the trace to the hole with solder, and then solder the wire into the original hole.

[Drakin]

Has anyone done this mod with the recoil working....

[Endprodukt]

I'm trying to get the rumble to work with my gun and can't seem to do it. My aimtrak module looks a little different to djvj's and I'm wondering if it's still able to drive the motor?

I can get the 5v into the motor and they work when connecting directly to the ground from the aimtrak on the backside... it just won't work from the trigger.

[Shaybe]

I realize this post is very old now. I just purchased two guncon 2's and the aimtrak hardware. I do not know a whole lot about soldering PCB's (Which hole is common and which is the lead) and none of these pictures seem to work anymore. Does anyone have any pictures of how to wire a guncon 2?

[hedgeoscar91]

where are all of the pictures for this guide?
Here is the Yobo Guncon2 after unpacking it. Notice the screw marked as short. When you are putting it back together, if you put a long screw in this hole, it  will break through the other side.



Dismantle

Remove all the visible screws, including the big ones in the grip. There are 3 small screws under it. You will need to use a tiny flathead screwdriver to pry the ribbed grip from the rest of the body. It should now separate easily showing the inside.



Remove all the internals.



Painting

Now it's time to paint your guns whatever color(s) you like. I used 2-3 coats of Krylon Plastic Spray Paint then 2 coats of Krylon Crystal Clear. I must admit that I am not happy with the 'feel' of the clear coat. It feels a little sticky in your hand after you hold it for a minute. Also Plastic paint is supposed to have an adhesive in it to help bond to plastic, yet this stuff seems to chip off pretty easily. You may want to research a better paint.







Make sure you do even strokes of paint 8-12" from the gun. Never start spraying over the gun and end spraying after you pass the gun. If you get any paint in the part where the trigger swivels, this needs to be scraped off, it will not allow the trigger to spring back after pressed.

I would let the guns sit for at least 24-48 hours for the final coat to harden. Once you are ready to start wiring, I suggest using a cloth or old t-shirt to rest the guns on to do your work, anything else can damage your paint job. I learned the hard way on my blue gun.

Wiring

This is your choice, but I wired the d-pad, bottom button, trigger, button under trigger, and the spring-loaded button to the Aimtrak. So the rest of this guide is assuming you do the same.

Start with removing all the wires from the buttons and d-pad by heating the solder and pulling the wires out. The wires on the pcbs can be cut.



I desoldered the 5 holes on the d-pad to allow easy insertion of my wires. It's not necessary but I don't like the solder that was used from the manufacturer. It need a lot more heat to melt then normal resin core solder.



You need to cut enough 30-AWG Kynar wire (from Radio Shack) to go from the tip of the gun's barrel to the d-pad. You need 4 of these. It doesn't matter what buttons you solder to what hole on the Aimtrak, this will be configured in software. I did P1-P4. P5's length should be able to go from the tip of the gun all the way down to the bottom switch.

I used a green wire to show the common that we will use for these buttons. The green wire needs to reach to the bottom button. If you want to connect the motor for trigger feedback, cut another length of wire and connect it to the 5v line on the Aimtrak as shown in pic11 below. Make all the connections you see in the below pic and set aside.



I used a hobby knife to score the barrel in 3 areas so the Aimtrak sits nicely in the barrel. Notice the tip is not scored all the way through as to not see it from the outside.



Now place the Aimtrak in the barrel and the wires should be ran as seen below. Use some hot glue so the wires are held in place. The d-pad can be placed back in its slot. I also used some hot glue to keep the d-pad wires from moving and breaking off from use over time.





Wire P5 from the Aimtrak to the bottom switch, also connect your common from the d-pad to it like shown below.



Take the 4-pin cable that came with your Aimtrak (you can plug this into your Aimtrak now if you want) and cut/solder one of the commons to the button as shown below.



Place the bottom button in the gun.



Place the Motor back in the gun and remove the wire that was on the middle pin of the switch, this wire is not long enough to reach the trigger switch so solder a new one the length of the gun. This switch is to allow the user to turn off the feedback when needed. The red 5v line should be spliced with  the black wire from the motor. I suggest using heat shrink on all splices to avoid any shorts. Place the switch back in the gun.





Next is the spring loaded button, I have this running in parallel with the button below the trigger. This is so you can use either button to reload your ammo in games.



Cut the 2nd common wire from the 4-pin Aimtrak cable and solder it to the button like shown.





Now take the AUX wire from the Aimtrak 4-pin cable and solder it to the other side of the button.



Cut 2 more wires (I used the same color to not confuse) long enough to reach the reload button below the trigger. Now solder them to the button. Be very careful to angle the wires when soldering like I did. You will have trouble closing the gun and will cause too much friction in the spring-loaded reload from sliding smoothly. If you have this problem with sliding, this is your cause.



Place the button in the gun. The angled wires should be pointing down toward the body of the gun. Make sure you run the wires and hot glue them down similar to how I did to avoid them getting pinched anywhere.



This next part is up to how you want to go about it. The included USB cable with the Aimtrak has no way strain-relief. So we must address this now. My choice was to splice the Guncon2's USB cable with the one included with the Aimtrak. I cut away the 2nd Playstation cable so only the USB cable remains.

If you choose to do the same, cut the Aimtrak's USB cable so the wires will be long enough to be spliced above the motor inside the handle of the gun. I had to tone out the pins of both USB cables to match up the colors. When you cut the cables, if the colors match the pic below, then match them up like I did. The Guncon2's cable is on the left, and the mini-USB end is on the right. If you have trouble splicing the ground (solder doesn't like to stick to it), use a crimp splice.



After all my splices were done, I used some more heat shrink to keep it all tidy.



Position the USB cable like shown.



Place your plastic back on the 2 switches.





Hot glue down your Aimtrak, I used glue on both sides.



Place the 3 side buttons back in the gun.



Place the trigger back in with it's spring.



This is the old pcb. The 4 points shown are for the trigger switch and where we will place the last set of wires. For now screw it back into the gun.





Solder the AUX wire (coming from the button in pic22) to the top point as shown (it's orange in my pic because I ran out of yellow and had to splice it as you can see). The brown wire is the common which goes to the old pcb you just screwed back in.



The remaining wires get soldered to the trigger switch. The red kynar wire is coming from the switch at the bottom of the gun, this provides the motor feedback when pulling the trigger. The orange wire is coming from the TRIGGER from the 4-pin Aimtrak cable. The grey wire is the common from the 4-pin Aimtrak cable. The brown wire is the common coming from the reload switch below the trigger. Hope this isn't too confusing for you . I spliced the commons like this cause to avoid too much clutter, you can see they are joined by the housing of the button on the other side of the pcb.



Hot glue all the wires down and place the plastic buttons in position. I scraped off paint where the bottom button swivels, else it will be sticky after reassembling.



Place the spring and the bottom half reload plastic in place.



Lastly, put the top half of the gun back on. You may need to use something small to hold the spring back while putting the top half on. Don't forget to hold the last side button in place too! This can be tricky.



It's a good idea before you put any screws in to test all your buttons and make sure everything moves nicely. If things don't spring back nicely, check to make sure it's not paint inhibiting movement.

This is how the Aimtrak should look from the front.



Complete, be proud!

[PL1]

where are all of the pictures for this guide?

No idea.   

The first photo URL is http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/9726/guncon1.jpg, but it obviously isn't there any more.

That post is an example of why we encourage people to host photos here in the "NOT A PROJECT" thread in Project Announcements instead of on 3rd party sites like imageshack.

OP was logged in here just a few weeks ago so a fix may be possible if copies of the photos are still available.


Scott

[djvj]

No idea.   

The first photo URL is http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/9726/guncon1.jpg, but it obviously isn't there any more.

That post is an example of why we encourage people to host photos here in the "NOT A PROJECT" thread in Project Announcements instead of on 3rd party sites like imageshack.

OP was logged in here just a few weeks ago so a fix may be possible if copies of the photos are still available.


Scott

Because Attachment rules here are so antiquated and there's 40 pictures. I tried multiple ways to host them here and all fail.
1 - Limit 8 attachments, there's 40
2 - Limit 10MB, I'm at 20MB
3 - Limit 4MB per file, can't zip them all in one file

Don't have so many hurdles and you won't have to encourage that. I have to spread the files over 3 posts zipped just to post them all!

[djvj]

2nd set of pics

[djvj]

3rd set of pics

[PL1]

Thanks for uploading the photos here.   


Scott