XBOX 360 Stick project

[johnperkins21]

This is my first of hopefully many project announcements. With the upcoming release of Street Fighter II for the XBOX 360 Live Arcade, I started to look around for a good stick for the 360. The only one out there is for DOA, and I've heard not so great things about it. So, I decided that hacking a wired 360 pad and building one myself would be a great introductory project for me. I plan on building a cab this fall, but have very little experience with woodworking, and almost no tools. And since the wired controllers work on the PC, this stick will be dual purpose.

I am at the very early stages of this project. I've got my layout set, and I've ordered a Competition joystick and some buttons from divemaster. I also bought a cheap 3rd party controller to use, and some soldering equipment. Hopefully my wife doesn't catch on to how much this project is going to cost, as I've still got sawhorses, clamps, and a router to buy before I can get much further.

I do hope to have this project completed by this weekend. Just a few days after the release of SFII on XBLA. I'll do my best to document all of my progress, but all I've got is a camera phone, so the pictures may not come out all that great.

Any advice on this for a newbie? I've done welding before, but never any soldering. I'm hoping to practice using an old PS2 controller. Hints on soldering to a controller would be welcome.

[n3rrd]

How do you plan to get around the analog triggers?  Or do they click at the very end of their throw?  Regardless, you won't be able to keep the analog functionality of those shoulder buttons.

When soldering to the board, try to get in and out as quickly as possible.  The longer you heat the board, the greater the possibility of damaing the controller.

I've never opened a 360 controller, so these are just things to keep in mind... alot of the time, in controls/buttons that use the rubber domes, the traces directly under the domes are covered in a film that can't be soldered to.  If you are soldering to those pads, the black stuff needs to be cleaned off.

Otherwise, there may be little holes in teh board along various traces that you can solder too...

Just try to get some general experience with the iron first.  Solder two wires together, that sort of thing.

[johnperkins21]

I made my layout before noticing that there seems to be no good way to get the analog triggers to work. Luckily, SFII only needs 6 buttons. So I'll be going with a more traditional 6 button layout, unless I can think of something to push the lever.

When I get home tonight, I'll take a few photos of the dissected pad. I've heard the thing about the black stuff over the contact, but this 3rd party controller just has a square rubber pad with 4 "columns" to make the contact. I don't think I have to scrape anything off as the contact is gold.

Thanks for the tips. I planned on making some practices and hopefully not heating the pcb for more than 4 seconds at a time. Would that be too long? I've read 2 seconds with just the iron, about 1-2 seconds of solder + iron, then pull the solder away quickly followed by the iron. If I screw up, at least it was only a $25 3rd party wired pad instead of one of the $60 MS Wireless ones.

[n3rrd]

I made my layout before noticing that there seems to be no good way to get the analog triggers to work. Luckily, SFII only needs 6 buttons. So I'll be going with a more traditional 6 button layout, unless I can think of something to push the lever.

When I get home tonight, I'll take a few photos of the dissected pad. I've heard the thing about the black stuff over the contact, but this 3rd party controller just has a square rubber pad with 4 "columns" to make the contact. I don't think I have to scrape anything off as the contact is gold.

Thanks for the tips. I planned on making some practices and hopefully not heating the pcb for more than 4 seconds at a time. Would that be too long? I've read 2 seconds with just the iron, about 1-2 seconds of solder + iron, then pull the solder away quickly followed by the iron. If I screw up, at least it was only a $25 3rd party wired pad instead of one of the $60 MS Wireless ones.

It's generally "two seconds", but as with everything, there is a little leeway, I guess.  It also depends on how hot the iron is, but you generally shouldn't be using anything higher than 45w on things like this, especially at the beginning. 

If you've just bought the iron, and if it's a cheaper iron, then you'll want to make sure you tin the tip of the iron when you first plug it in.  Wait around for it to heat up, pressing a bit of solder to the tip every so often.  YOu want to coat the tip in solder to protect the tip from corrosion.  A black or deep brown tip has oxidized and will not transfer heat nearly as effectively as a golden/silver tip.  Having a tip that is in good health will make your joints that much better and you'll be able to get in and out more quickly.

I would try to have small (reasonable) amounts of solder on the tip when you go in to make a joint.  The excess solder helps to make sure you're making contact with both surfaces and helps transfer heat more quickly.

Just like painting, or cutting wood, there are signs to look for in a joint to tell if it's good.  You generally want just enough solder to make the connection.  You should see a concave blob that bridges the empty spaces, between the wire and pad, for example.  The joint should be shiny and smooth, as opposed to grey and pitted.  The latter means that you have a cold solder joint, and while it may not be overly critical in this sort of application, there is no reason not to do the best job you can, right?   A cold joint may work right off the bat, but it may suffer from intermittent connections later on in life, may not be structurally sound, and may just not work at all.

It's pretty common to give a little tug on a joint after it's cooled completely to test it's strength (which should be fairly strong), but try not to pull the pad right off the board... 

Sorry if I'm rambling.

[johnperkins21]

Thank you for the tips. Rambling or not, it is certainly helpful. I'd much rather you ramble on and give out too much information than hold back and watch me make a dumb mistake.

I tried to take photos of the controller with my camera phone, but they turned out horrible. I will get a hold of a digital camera soon to get some pictures. Maybe someone will have an idea how to keep the analog triggers using some sort of brilliant mechanical device.

[Potts]

Hey johnperkins21,

Please do post pics of inside the controller - I am very interested in checking out the possibilities.  I actually own a QuasiCON controller which has all the analog sticks and buttons.  Not a perfect controller but definitely very cool.  I purchased it to dig it's guts out and create the ultimate arcade Mame but I changed my mind due to size constraints of my Cocktail cabinet (see Modern take on Retro Design).

My friends just got me a couple of analogs sticks from Ulitmarc as a present  -

http://www.ultimarc.com/ultrastik_inst.html

before this awesome gift I didn't even know you could buy them (apart from gutting a QuasiCON).  THe UltiMarc sticks are really cool but to large for what I want to do - I was thinking I would like to place small analog sticks between the buttons, as tiny analog sticks already exist in the 360 controllers (or PS2, XBox etc) I have been thinking how the hell could I reverse-engineer a controller to hack into my Mame cabinet - Hence my interest in your post.  I will be keeping an eye out -

Good luck dude !!
cheers
Potter

[johnperkins21]

Here's some pics of the decased controller. I apologize for the crappy photos, but I don't have a good digital camera.

I'm not sure how feasible it would be to take advantage of the analog controls. But then again, I'm pretty new at this whole thing.

That third photo is kind of hard to understand, but it was the best shot I could get of how the analog triggers work. Basically it is a square box with a round disc on it. A small post sticks out from the disc, and the trigger turns the disc when pulled in. It has a very small amount of resistance. Not sure if that helps any of you potential hackers out there or not.

I hope to get started on the soldering tomorrow night, and the building on Saturday.

[theCoder]

Regarding the analog controls...
If you remove the assembly from the board, you could probably mount them (or at least the left one) on another board and get it into a CP.  I'm thinking about doing this on an upcoming project.  If you remove the top knob, you could add a shaft with a small hole in it.  The shaft could be made with a slip fit hole to slide over the existing shaft, with threads on the other end for a new knob.  If you don't have the means to make threads, you could just use silicon to hold the knob in place.

Getting it off of the board should (??) be easy (??).  I'm guessing here, but if you look at the back side you will likely see two types of leads coming through the board.  Some will be physically holding the assembly to the board.  These will likely be big.  There will probably be 2 or 4 of them.  At least 4 (possibly more) smaller leads will be signal.  There should be leads for ground, x axis, y axis, and down button.

Good luck.

[n3rrd]

theCoder, I don't know if the analog sticks are the biggest issue... but the XBox controllers have analog shoulder buttons, too.  Alot like the Dreamcast.

Or were those what you were talking about?

[theCoder]

My comments were regarding the left and right thumb joysticks.  The shoulder trigger buttons are a whole different conversation.

I'm not sure about your needs, but on my project I'm going to want at least the left thumb stick to be an analog joystick.  I'll probably implement the right and left shoulder triggers as on/off switches.

[johnperkins21]

I have learned something today. I have learned that I completely suck at this. Before I started my project, I had admired you guys that do such great jobs on your cabs, but now I

[johnperkins21]

Trying to sell a house while doing this project is painful. I had everything set up to start doing my soldering in the kitchen when we got a call from an agent who wants to show the house. 

I know you all are anxious to see how ugly this thing can possibly be, so I'll try to get it done tonight.

[n3rrd]

What are your feelings on the Ryobi tools?  The price is right (with tuition, and what not), but I haven't been sure.  Are you happy with them thus far?  I'm sure they would be fine for these kinds of jobs... but felt like asking since you have a bunch!

[johnperkins21]

The cordless tools seem pretty good. The drill has decent power, but definitely not as much as a nice Dewalt or something. I wouldn't want to use them if I were a construction worker, but for most projects around the house they do the trick. The table saw though, doesn't really seem to be worth the cost savings at this point. Maybe after I get more practice I'll change my mind, but for now it's not that great.

Related to the project: I had a catastrophic failure today. I was able to solder all the connections for the directions, but the connections for the buttons were extremely small. So while trying to get those connected, I ended up ruining the board and had to toss it. I will try to get a MS 360 pad as the pictures I've seen of it show that they have better connections to solder to. So my project is back on hold until I can find a reasonably priced 360 controller.

This is very sad, because after I hooked up the directions I ran a test and it worked. I was elated at that point, so I went to all the extremes today. It is a very good learning experience and I haven't given up yet.