6 analogues and 14 digital outputs - the £2 'midi brain'

Just picked up a couple of old xbox 1 gamepads from a charity shop for £2 each. Once the connector had been chopped off and a normal usb cable had been attached (see: http://www.ocmodshop.com/ocmodshop.aspx?a=223), I installed the Windows drivers (using this guide: http://www.redcl0ud.com/xbcd.html).

Windows control panel then gives me 6 analogues and 14 digital outputs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl0_bRQijZk

which isn't bad for £2! (especially as most usb gamepads only give you 4 analogue outputs)

Even better is that each xbox gamepad has a built in 2 port usb hub. This means that I can easily solder the 2nd gamepad I bought directly to the first gamepads circuit board. This will give me 12 analogues and 28 digital outputs for less than a fiver... not bad I think you'll agree!

Does the controller have a good PCB for soldering on to or is it those little push pads that I hate so much? Good bargain though, even if you just end up using it to play Fifa 10. :)

the answer is yes and no, the solder pads are nicely spaced out for the analogue nubs but some of the digital pads might be trickier to solder... have a look:

confession time: I clicked on this thread only because my dirty mind made a connection between "6 analogues and 14 digitals" and "2 girls 1 cup".

Thanks for the photos, interesting stuff.

I might have to try one of these.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Archies'bald

Does the controller have a good PCB for soldering on to or is it those little push pads that I hate so much? Good bargain though, even if you just end up using it to play Fifa 10. :)

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The pads aren't too bad to solder to, just use a sharp blade to scrape off the carbon contact to reveal SHINY!!! copper track, the track must be shiny otherwise it still has crap on it, the way I did it was to scrape off the track just as it turns into the pad and then lay your wire ontop of the revealed track, that way you get a good solid contact area.

anyone know what kind of potentiometers they use? I'm guessing 10k linear?

Just to say this inspired me to try this too.

Just mocked up a quick test using the supplied driver and one button hooked up to an arcade button and SUCCESS!

Although I would recommend not splicing the cable into the xbox cable. What I did was unsolder the original cable from the PCB and solder in a usb cable back in. Much neater.

good idea - I'll probably do the same once I've soldered everything else on to the circuit board... just need to do some tests with various potentiometers first...