Adjustable Rapid Fire For Xbox 360 Controller

[Shawn] wrote in to share his post outlining the addition of rapid fire to an Xbox 360 controller. He’s going all out with this mod by including a pretty beefy microcontroller. But you get a lot of functionality for that. You can just make out the trimpot below and to the right of the green A button. This tweaks the speed at which your right trigger repeats. Next to the trimmer is an amber LED which indicates whether the hack is enabled or not. The switch to the left of the D-pad simply patches the add-on circuit into the right trigger hardware.

Some might raise an eyebrow when we call the ATtiny85 used here beefy. But considering the job at hand, we’re sure a lot of the lower end of the ATtiny family will work just as well. [Shawn] soldered everything up on a piece of protoboard and removed one of the rumble motors to make room inside the controller. The video after the break is pretty shaky and out of focus, but you can clearly hear him explain how the hack works.

If you’re looking for a rapid fire mod that doesn’t require programming a chip, perhaps you could just repurpose the PWM from the LED.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYAedWjAQ4E&w=470]

39 thoughts on “Adjustable Rapid Fire For Xbox 360 Controller

    1. I thought the same thing when reading the article. This can be easily replicated with a 555… Save the ATtiny for something more special (even though it’s dirt cheap, a 555 is even more dirt cheap).

    2. Same, it just seems a little silly to have a uC read an analog voltage digitize it and turn it into a steady stream of digital pulses onto an analog line when the analog value could trigger a 555 directly. You can even have it trigger at a certain threshold so only holding the trigger down fully engages the auto-click. No programming needed then.

      Decent documentation on the site though, pretty easy to follow along.

    3. it’s incredibly over the top, you might as well built a thunderbolt transceiver in it then make a backpack with a macbook and then run a 500MB application.. to get repeat fire.

    1. yeah, I don’t like this mod either. I’ve supported console gaming over PC when it comes to multi-player be it FPS, RPG, RTS, etc… because guarantees (or at least, use to) a level and fair playing field by forcing everybody to use the same or near same configuration of hardware.

      if I lose a deathmatch, I want it to be because they’re actually better than me. not because they can pull the trigger impossibly fast or in the case of different PC builds, because they can draw more polygons faster than me because they pay for their computer, not their bills..

      all that aside, and on the mod itself:
      it’s cool, but what would really be nice is if he were able to wire all of the controllers buttons and analog sticks and d-pad, triggers, etc.. to a micro controller that could have pre-programmed cheat codes patterns for whatever games there are that have such codes published.

      or like all the special moves for “code” heavy games like tony hawk or ‘super duper awsome street fighter II: omega hyper quick fast fighting black rolling thunder edition (version 7.9) with alternate colors’

      1. Maybe so, but I think it’s a poor game design that allows a rapid-fire button mod to give advantage to a user. Simply programming in a delay in a weapon/ability and allowing the button to be held down removes any advantage for rapid fire.

        Also, I vote 555 timer as well =) Not that I have any problem with a small uC. You could certainly do more with the uC, like maybe allow any buttons to be rapid fired, or maybe listen for a certain button sequence to toggle rapid fire on/off (like short press – short press – long press toggles rapid fire, etc) Or maybe control the frequency or duty cycle with similar sequences instead of relying on external pots.

      2. Your point is pretty much moot, because game code won’t let you fire faster than a certain rate anyway, so rapid fire controllers don’t give all that much of an advantage. If you want an advantage it would be much better to get one of those mouse/keyboard-to-controller converter modules. Rapid fire controllers used to be a big advantage but game designers have all but eliminated that.

  1. Nice mod! And for all those haters, they sell 3rd party controllers with this stuff built in, so he’s cheating just as much as you can, he just did it himself which is what this site is all about.

    1. Name at least one 3rd party controllers that come with rapid fire.

      I’ve never seen any 3rd party controllers with built in rapid fire other than normal ones that are modded to do so and sold on eBay.

    2. Haters? What are you, twelve?

      It is cheating. Regardless if you bought it OEM or hacked it. It defeats the intention of the game, and provides a non-organic advantage to the user. Kills you get with rapidfire mean nothing, as you mean nothing, because you no longer rely on skill to compete.

      As for your concept of cheating-because-others-can, you are a great example of what is wrong with society. Keep up the good work champ.

    3. @smoker_dave
      Yes. When rapid fire being enabled is the difference between firing one bullet and firing all of them, it’s kinda important that you know what will happen when you pull the trigger before you do it. The LED lets you know at a glance (so you don’t have to take your thumb off the stick) even if you play in a darkened room.

      1. Also @smokerdave,
        From the link you posted:
        “QuickShot has not launched a new line of joysticks in the 21st century.”

        This is for an xbox controller, not a console made 15 years ago.

  2. Oh Boy, another ModernWarfair baby that can’t win on their own skills. I am disgusted by this mod. Go play on PC if you want to cheat leave 360 to those who enjoy fair match ups. I hope Microsoft catches him and drops the banhammer down on him.

  3. i agree that people who use rapid fire use it because they suck so bad in the first place. they are looking for an advantage that isn’t being fufilled with skill alone, so they mod and cheat in hopes of beating someone who is obviously better. i’ve known a few people using a rapid fire mod stay at the bottem of the leader board because they just simply suck.

  4. Well if you guys even read my blog post I said in the first line “NOTES: I do not condone the use of rapid fire mods on online games, it gives a unfair advantage and is cheating. No one likes being cheated. ” I’m a sniper so this mod isn’t going to help my accuracy shooting you much.

    The second thing is, this mod lets you set the delay, which is something that is already set on all other mods. This delay is set by the pot, so you have 979 different speeds not just a few.

    The LED is for power testing so you know, none of your wires have broken, or shorted between the controllers positive and ground. The LED is always on. (the wire I used broke a lot at the solder joints so this was helpful) You will know if it’s rapid fire or not based on which way you turn the switch and knob when you first turn on your controller. (I labeled them)

    The mod is centered around arduino, a lot of people are familiar with it and can fallow this “how to” easily. A Attiny85 is about 2 bucks, so this mod is cheap. Yes I know you can use a 555 but then you can’t get the adjustable delay.

    Now my last comment is on this community, The “hacker” community. I’ve posted two things on this site and both times 15-30 people rag me out, and tell me my ideas and posts suck but you know what? None of you got my 500 views the first 15 hours of this being up, so if 15-30 of you want to be “haters” Then I will take my 470 other views as positive by silence. I think some of the people on this blog need a attitude check. So are you here to push the community forward, or here just to tell everyone their ideas suck?

    1. Couldn’t you just as easily (more easily,actually) make a 555 have a variable pulse delay with a knob? Also, for something as simple as this, you shouldn’t need a power led for “testing”. Are you really that terrible at soldering? I know it’s cliché to pick apart people’s projects on hack-a-day, but you just make it too easy.

    2. You can have variable PWMs with a 555. Here is one example.

      And just because you have a project featured doesn’t mean it was a good hack. I have had several featured all with mixed comments. Each gave me around 2,000 views on my blog. You can keep your 470. And even then, that’s not a valid rebuttal. The number of views only adds to ego.

      And as for the community, we don’t think everything sucks. We think things suck when they actually suck. Looking at your blog, the hand-made table and some python stuff is cool and wouldn’t get bashed.

      It’s neat that you learned something, and are exercising your need to rip things apart and mod them, but other than those reasons alone the community will call it as they see it.

      What would be cool and get better reviews, is if you took this further. Patch into all the buttons and maybe the LED status ring. From there you could map other things to the buttons. Like your keyboard or an accelerometer. Heck, mod a PS3 controller so you can use it on the 360 or something.

  5. This is a shit mod. There is a lot better over on xbox-scene. The spitfire mod was already mentioned, but there are a few using the same chip (and a bunch using an 8-pin PIC 12F683) that support multiple modes, don’t need a POT, a switch, and don’t require you to remove your trigger assembly.

  6. The switch and knob are low enough for the arch of my fingers, so no they are not in the way, and I do not believe they are in a terrible place.

    And no my soldering skills are good, its just if you have ever used super brittle wire (30AWG)then you would know 5 bends and the stuff brakes off easily. So yes the led was helpful for testing.

  7. reminds me of the scripts people would run in Half Life mod games and the like. i remember one in particular that was really simple, it swapped the “shoot” action from left mouse click to scroll down. each roll/click down was a shot. any semiauto weapon fired like in the video here. scroll down really fast and it was like a chainsaw

  8. Awesome Job bro. Modded controllers are not cheating. I don’t use one myself. I have made several for my friends that are used in online play! I am a online gamer. I play p.c., xbox, and ps3. You ppl think its cheating b/c their smart enough to get better tools for the job! That’s retarded. That’s like saying lets go to war ,but your only allowed to use infantryman armed with single shot 270s! No bombs automatic weapons, etc. The games are not fair. They reward players better weapons the longer they play. So how is someone. who just got the game suppose to compete with players who had it since it come out. I feel A controller is exactly that a controller as long as your not stealing the game or software I don’t think anything should be done about it!

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