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Step 3Onto the modification
Now we're ready to tackle the most tedious and important part. Soldering all the necessary cables in place at the right spots. But before we do that I want to pull through some basic theory on electronics/physics!
A gamepad works by sensing that the current are flowing through (-) to (+) through a certain point and hence telling the computer a button is down. When you're not pushing a button the current isn't flowing. What you're simply doing when pressing a button is giving the electric current a path so it connects - that's all there is to it.
If you check the first image below you'll see the rubber buttons. Underneath them are round gold plate areas. If you look closely you'll see it's two completely different paths that's not connecting. One path is coming from the big light green area and the other is coming from a long thin path within dark green lines. When you press the rubber button it intersects those two paths.
The big light green area is (-) and the small paths within dark green lines are (+). (-) is also known as ground.
If you check the second image I've already got the work done. Let me explain what I did.
First we only need one ground source so I destroyed one (+) path at one of the buttons - making it only ground. (black cables) Remember, it's where (-) flows to (+) that decides what button gets pushed so we can pull (-) from wherever we want. I could drill a hole in the middle of the green if I'd wanted to.
I soldered 7 cables to ground as that are as many switches I need for my controller. 5 fret buttons and 2 switches for strum. (up/down) Remember, it's better to have too long cables than too short - best is to measure first.
After that I drilled holes at all (-)/ground paths, destroying them/removing them completely, to make it easier to solder a (+) source at each button.
The shoulder buttons made it easier for me as they had cables I could use instead - hence I removed the small boards.
After you've soldered all cables, connect the controller to the PC again and make sure to test touch the ends of each ground cable and (+) cable to see that the buttons are still working and that you didn't happen to short circut (-) and (+) somewhere. If you did you'll see a button always being pushed no matter what you do. My controller board was nice enough to mark out wich button is which so it was easy to find where I did my mistake and correct it.
After that I added hot glue to everything.
Now all you have to do is connect one black (-) and one red (+) cable to each microswitch and add some hot glue to keep them in place.
Remember - you don't have to use microswitches. You can use whatever you want as a switch, could just be two pieces metal or something that the current can go through when connected.
A gamepad works by sensing that the current are flowing through (-) to (+) through a certain point and hence telling the computer a button is down. When you're not pushing a button the current isn't flowing. What you're simply doing when pressing a button is giving the electric current a path so it connects - that's all there is to it.
If you check the first image below you'll see the rubber buttons. Underneath them are round gold plate areas. If you look closely you'll see it's two completely different paths that's not connecting. One path is coming from the big light green area and the other is coming from a long thin path within dark green lines. When you press the rubber button it intersects those two paths.
The big light green area is (-) and the small paths within dark green lines are (+). (-) is also known as ground.
If you check the second image I've already got the work done. Let me explain what I did.
First we only need one ground source so I destroyed one (+) path at one of the buttons - making it only ground. (black cables) Remember, it's where (-) flows to (+) that decides what button gets pushed so we can pull (-) from wherever we want. I could drill a hole in the middle of the green if I'd wanted to.
I soldered 7 cables to ground as that are as many switches I need for my controller. 5 fret buttons and 2 switches for strum. (up/down) Remember, it's better to have too long cables than too short - best is to measure first.
After that I drilled holes at all (-)/ground paths, destroying them/removing them completely, to make it easier to solder a (+) source at each button.
The shoulder buttons made it easier for me as they had cables I could use instead - hence I removed the small boards.
After you've soldered all cables, connect the controller to the PC again and make sure to test touch the ends of each ground cable and (+) cable to see that the buttons are still working and that you didn't happen to short circut (-) and (+) somewhere. If you did you'll see a button always being pushed no matter what you do. My controller board was nice enough to mark out wich button is which so it was easy to find where I did my mistake and correct it.
After that I added hot glue to everything.
Now all you have to do is connect one black (-) and one red (+) cable to each microswitch and add some hot glue to keep them in place.
Remember - you don't have to use microswitches. You can use whatever you want as a switch, could just be two pieces metal or something that the current can go through when connected.
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