I finally completed my wireless guitar hero controller mod! With so much space available in the guitar, i knew it was possible. id just never got around to finally doing it. Long story short, i had to completely dismantle the guts of the guitar to do this. its not possible to do this mod without soldering or removing parts from the guitar hero board.... at least, not the way i dd it.
it was $40 at best buy for the 2 player kit, and as a nice bonus they had clear cases, so i could easily see there would be enough room for the circuit board inside of the guitar, and plenty of nice big pads to solder on. The guts of the sony controllers are much "tighter" and the pads much harder to get to. This controller had what appeared to be some sort of test pad near each of the button pads on the board. almost like it was made for it ;)
What i did was essentially cut all of the switch wires in the guitar, and wire them to the buttons on the ps2 controller, along with permanantly wiring the left dpad in the down position, to simulate the guitar controller. The original circuit board is nothing more than a plate to hold the two strum switches in place. The resistors on the circuit board interfere with the switch operation, so the non-ground traces to the switches on the board had to be cut. that, or desolder the resistor, which would be much more repairable. The solder connections are very tiny, and i want this to last! so taking a hint from red octane, i backed up all my solder joints with dabs of hot glue. The battery holder on the controller was moulded into the plastic case, so i picked up a 2xAA pack that hooks up to a 9V snap-on connector and wired it to the battery leads.
The one problem i have yet to overcome, mostly because im too damn antsy to play with this to care much, is to get the whammy bar working perfectly. it cant be wired up in place of an analog controller input directly, it appears to be slightly off center. it likely needs a resistor of a value i dont have wired across it. ill figure that out when im taking apart guitar #2. so for now, i removed the spring clips from the whammy bar and let it float free. its only off by about 2 degrees of rotation, but the spring clips are precise enough that it wont work.
If you dont mind possibly trashing your contoller, there is only minimal electronics knowledge required to do this "mod". i didnt do anything more than run a wire from the guitar switch, to a pad on the controller. The only parts required were a battery holder, and a switch.
having the left button down seemed to defeat the automatic power saving features of this controller, so i installed a power switch where the cord used to be.
Sofar, range is 30 feet or so, and performance is fantastic. no noticable lag sofar, ill have a more critical evaluation of that in a few weeks. the batterys seem to last a heck of a long time, i left it on all night with the left d-pad stuck down, and im still jamming on that same set of batteries.
in the future id like to add a battery door on the back of the guitar body, change the power switch to a real guitar 5 way selector switch on the front, and find a cool spot to put the LED from the controller.
I hope this is inspiring, and id be happy to answer any questions or anything! :)
As you can see, nice big solder pads to work with. (well... ok.. not big, but at least it isnt close to anything that can burn up.). These solder pads are pretty delicate though. be sure to use stranded wire. Its also possible to file down the coating on the big metal pads, which is what i ended up doing after stupidly yanking a wire and ripping off a tiny pad. well worth the tiny effort to file it down.
All of the buttons share the main positive (+) battery lead, except start and select. the start buttons solder pad is dangerously close to the button circuitry, it might help to scrape away the other lead (not needed) near that solder pad. pics when i do this step again myself.
The left D-pad lead must be permanantly tied to + battery to make the game operate in "guitar mode".
The Whammy bar is wired up with both battery leads, and the center terminal going to the wammy bar lead. pic of proper orientation to come.
the star power tilt sensor system is self contained, and is attached like any other button. I guess star power is actually L2, but i just wired it up to the same pad as the select button, and it seems to work fine. id recommend jumpering the wire from the select button board for a neater look.
Here is my second board, with all the leads wired up, except for the battery box. I screwed up and ruined the tiny pad for the up D-pad, and its not repairable. its really not worth using them, so i switched them all to the large filed down pads. so it looks like this one will have to strum down in both directions (this works fine from what ive read, you just have to scroll through menus longer)
Very nice! I saw this via MAKE, early Monday morning, and passed a link off to a buddy of mine who works at Harmonix (with a suggestion he pass it off to the Guitar Hero team). Kudos!
EDIT: There were a couple of fairly embarassing mistakes in the first diagram i posted. mainly that the +/- battery leads are mislabeled, and the fact that the switches are tied to +3V instead of ground!
good thing i followed my own instructions on guitar #2 :) more pics on the way soon
Thanks for the positive feedback everyone! im honored to have this project get so much attention. especially from make! you guys rock! :)
so, i finally completed the second guitar controller with the other half of the 2 player wireless kit. cleaned up the wiring some, totally ruined the solder pad for the "up" strum button, and couldnt repair it (doh!) but heres a picture of a much nicer internal wiring job
I should have taken a closer picture of the strum switch board before i hot-glued up all the joints. Dont forget to cut the traces on the board that lead to the strum switches or you will have issues!
Sofar im on the SAME set of batteries in the first guitar! the same set i left on overnight the first night, and used all day for experimenting. Another unexpected bonus of this wireless kit, is that the first guitar to be powered on is player #1. so you can just grab the first one you see and start rockin! :)
This wireless MOD ROCKS. I just finished my own Guitar hero mod myself. I made a Guitar hero Controller from a real electric guitar. Next, I am going to try and make it wireless. Hope you enjoy. -Ryan
I love this mod. But, how did you know to jumper the left dpad for "guitar mode." I ask because I want to do the same mod for my taiko drums. Thanks. Roy
Courtesy of a gentleman on flickr that did a similar mod. I was looking for the Pelican Wavestation thing mentioned above, but its not widely available. These adapters, on the other hand, are in stock at Lik-Sang.
And if you want to do the wireless mod, I'd venture that using the lik-sang adapters would be a lot easier (i'm about to find out, as I'm attempting this mod once all the parts come in myself), but props to TheDude.
Youre welcome for the free market research redoctane, contact me for a resume someday (please?) ;)
"RedOctane today confirmed that a wireless Guitar Hero controller is in fact in the works, and will be available in November. The guitar will feature a glossy white finish and will offer the same set of features as its wired counterpart, including compatibility with both Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero II."
Has anyone gotten this to really work? If so, let all of us know how you did it. I followed TheDude's directions, but so far, it doesnt work. The buttons still act as: Green - L2 Red - L1 Yellow - R1 Blue - R2 Orange - X
And when I hit the buttons, they dont just highlight, they highlight and strum, so it still doesnt work, I dont know where he got X = blue, Triangle = yellow ..... thing. Please help. Thanks.
My GH2 controller hasn't worked since I opened the box and plugged it for the first time (no, it didn't work that time either). Right now, I have the body of the controller open and don't see anything wrong with the wiring or boards. My guess is that either the machine in china that makes these things skipped something, like a fuse or solder, or that the controller's cord has a bad wire in it. At my disposal are the following:
1 pelican "chameleon" wireless controller as pictured (and reciever)
1 dismanteled standard issue ps2 sony controller (I disconnected the controller's cord from the I/O port on its board)
I don't have a soldering kit, anything to check the fuses on the boards with (that I know of), or the option of trashing my GH2 controller.
My guess is that using the cord from my sony ps2 controller, I can cut my GH2 controller's cord off a few inches from either the plug or the body of the cotroller and wire the ps2's controller's cord in its place. But I'm not totally sure it'll work because nothing seems to be wrong with the exterior of my GH2's cord and hence the inside might be the same case.
I was excited when I found this article. I ripped the controller and guitar apart, then realized I didn't have the skill or patience to do it.
The suggestion of the Pelican WaveStation sparked my interest. After hours of searching I was convinced the Pelican WaveStation was extinct. Then I found one on eBay. I am convinced I bought the last one on the internet. I got it for 3.99 plus about 10 bucks in shipping, much cheaper than a wireless controller.
It is on its way in the mail. I plan to take apart the transmitter and mount it inside the guitar. I will just tuck the cable inside the guitar, and plug it in. I plan to use the battery housing, from the transmitter, on the guitar. I will cut a square in the back of the guitar and model glue it in place.
I will post pictures or a link to the new thread when I am done.
I had completely forgotten about my failed attemp at this project until I cleaned the electronic guts out from under my bed the other day.
I decided just to try the pelican wavestation out without taking it apart first. THE PELICAN WAVESTATION DOES NOT WORK WITH GUITAR HERO CONTROLLERS.I think it has to do with the way the controller "holds down" the left d-pad...
Custom painting my guitar hero guitar.....................$20 Attempting to make it wireless...................................$14 Beating "Through Fire and Flames" on expert........Priceless