Hack Your Game Controller - Part #1 the Teardown

Everybody dreams of hacking their game control pad and making it control something else. Maybe to run their RC car, a robotic arm, or maybe their home theater system.

Other folks need to mod their controller so they can use it better. Not everyone has full use of both hands, yet most game controllers require two hands. What if you want to reconfigure the buttons and place them elsewhere, or turn them into foot pedals.

Either way, the process of modding requires a medium level of electronic knowledge and some crafting skills. There are some good tutorials out there for hacking specific controller models to do specific things. That's great, but what if you don't have that specific controller. Or what if you want to do something different than the what the tutorial shows you.

I've seen too many people start modding their controllers and then stop because their model or their needs are too different from the tutorials. Also, I don't know of any good generic introductions to hacking and modding game controllers.

I was one of those people who gave up the first time I tried it, and it has taken me more than three years of tinkering with electronics to learn enough that I can take parts from multiple tutorials and mix them together to work with my controllers. Now it all seems so simple, not even worth writing a tutorial on.

But I recently saw another person starting the learning process and remembered how overwhelming it could be. So I thought I would do a series of simple videos to help get newbies started - to teach enough of the basic concepts so that they can pick out the useful parts from other how-to guides.

The first step is look inside some game controllers. Then poke around and notice the differences and similarities in various models. That's what this video does - we tear down three old game controllers and have a quick look around.

(Or go directly to the YouTube video on my channel)

Just cracking the case and looking around can be really scary for first timers. Having buttons and switches falling out, not really understanding how it all works, where the electrical signals come from or where they go - it can be overwhelming.

Remember back to when you didn't really understand the difference between digital and analog signals, and you didn't "just know" which components did what. That's who these first few videos are designed for. So be patient, the real fun stuff is coming up after we cover the basics.

In this video we salvage a few parts, just cut them right off the PCB and leave the wires dangling and unconnected. Savage!!! The next video will explore how to re-use the parts we scavenge in this video. We'll look at the buttons and the joysticks and get a better understanding of digital versus analog signals.

We'll even explore how we can hook these salvaged parts up to an Arduino microcontroller. And all these concepts will be useful if you want to simply relocate buttons using your existing controllers.

As the series grows I will make a project page. There is a lot of good information out there on modding game controllers, so as the concepts are introduced I will link to these videos and tutorials.

If a few of you crack the cases of your controllers and rip parts out to use elsewhere, then this video will be a success.

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