How to Piggyback an Xbox360 controller on a Universal PCB

Step 3 Preparing the Controller

The controller to hack here MUST use a common ground setup! This cannot be stressed enough. In order for this setup to work, the signal lines on the controller must be high when not pressed, and low when pressed. As of yet, there are no official Microsoft manufactured wired controllers that use a common ground setup, however there are a number of controllers, especially MadCatz brand, that do.

Now we're going to take some time to examine the controller and plan out how we want to proceed. We've identified all of the wires in the piggyback connector, now we just gotta figure out where to connect them to the controller.

Disassemble your controller to remove all of the plastic around so we can get to the bare board. Any rumble motors should be removed and the red and black wires going to them trimmed close to the board. The trigger mechanisms can be removed, leaving just the small potentiometer attached to the back.

On our MadCatz board, this brings the controller down to a much more manageable size, but there is more we can do to make it smaller.

The DPad is a raised plus-sign shaped board. Two screws in the front and two screws in the back can be removed to separate it from the board, leaving only a small five pin ribbon cable connecting it. Take a peek at both sides of the plus-sign shaped board to identify which of the five wires are for the four directions we need. Write this down. Heat up your soldering iron, and remove the ribbon cable from the board by melting the solder and gently lifting up each wire. We'll be soldering our direction wires to those points on the board, so leave them clean with no solder bridging any points.

The 'bumper' microswitches on the top of the board can be removed the same way. Melt the solder from underneath, pull one leg up, and repeat for the other leg.

The USB cable has 5 wires soldered into the board. Identify each one of the wires and the hole it goes into, and write that down. Since the USB standard says what each color of wire should be, writing down the colors with suffice. The extra wire is the shielding from the cable, and is connected to ground. There is hot glue around those points on the board where the wires are soldered. Use pair of pliers or Xacto knife to lift up the hot glue from the board, taking care not to damage the board any. Once the glue is out of the way, use your soldering iron to melt the solder and pull each wire up individually. After the USB cable has been fully removed, use either copper braid or a desoldering pump to remove the solder from those through holes. We'll be putting wire of our own to those points from the ribbon cable, and it'll be much nicer to actually run the wire through the hole properly.

The trigger potentiometers on the back can be removed. The good news is that we don't have to worry about being too careful removing them; there is only one point per trigger we actually care about, and there is a test point on the front of the board for each one we'll actually be using. So remove the potentiometers, and don't sweat it if a pad comes off. Just make sure no point touches any of the other two.

The two analog sticks are a bit of a pain. The metal shaft can be cut down with a Dremel cutting wheel. If you're hard core, they can be removed, but its difficult.