Finding Extra Room for Mods in Your Controller

There are a lot of tutorials on how to make a modded controller, but in order to make room for the chips and buttons you are forced to remove a motor, or two. In this instructable I will show you a few other places where you can put your mods, so that you can keep your motors right where they are

Step 1: Opening Up the Controller

first your going to want to open up your controller. If you already know how to do this move to the next step, if not read on. You can use either of the instructables listed below to learn how to open up the controller. If you haven't opened a controller before chances are you haven't modified your controller, so before you continue decide what exactly you want to do to your controller.
https://www.instructables.com/id/how-to-open-up-a-Xbox-360-controller-with-only-a-f/
https://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-open-an-XBOX-360-controller-without-a-speci/

Step 2: The Spots to Use

the most common spot to use is where the motors are. you can just remove the motors and you have a whole bunch of room to work with, but you lose the rumble on one or both sides.

My favorite spot to use is right behind the left stick in the top portion of the controller. you can use that spot for 8pin dips like a picaxe08m or a 555 timer, and there is a nearly identical spot on the other side. Heres a link to a picture i made explaining the method http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid=7580&d=1300511581

For a project that I'm currently working on i need to fit a picaxe 18m2 in the controller, but i didn't want to remove the motors. I'm using a wired controller, because its a much more simple board and its easier to modify. I was able to cut off a whole section of the board and remove a few screw posts from the shell of the controller without loosing any functions in the controller. I used the hole where the screw was to fit the programming jack for the picaxe. the result was enough room to fit not one, but two picaxe 18m2s in the controller. Heres a link to a picture i made explaining the method http://www.picaxeforum.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid=7581&d=1300511603

Another interesting way to put mods in the controller is to make a pcb that is designed to fit around all of the button holes and such to increase the area of usable pcb space.

Just pick one of these three methods and you wont have to remove your motors. Enjoy