Shoving A Raspberry Pi Zero Into An Xbox Controller

December 2, 2015 by James Hobson 18 Comments

With the release of the Raspberry Pi Zero last month, we’ve been waiting in excitement to see the first creative hacks to come out, making use of its tiny size; which if you didn’t know, is smaller than a business card. [Terence Eden] hopped to it and made what might be the first Raspberry Pi Zero emulator: inside an Xbox controller.

Thanks to its small size it’s actually a fairly straight forward hack with minimal modification to the controller in order to make it fit. In fact, you only need to remove the memory card holder from the controller and snip one bit of plastic in order to make it fit right in the middle — awesome.

Now it does stick out a bit as you can see in the pictures, but we’re sure it won’t take someone long to make a 3D printed part that snaps into the controller giving it a more stock appearance. Unfortunately since HDMI can’t carry a power source to the Pi, [Terence] is using a micro-USB to power it — but there is enough space inside the controller for a battery pack if you wanted to make it truly portable.

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Adding A Fan Where Microsoft Should Have

November 19, 2015 by James Hobson 43 Comments

The Xbox 360 is a great console. But unfortunately, some units are quite susceptible to overheating, resulting in the horrifying red ring of death (or RROD for short!). Sometimes the damage is done, and you’re pretty much out of luck. But if it’s a two light RROD (indicating inadequate cooling), there’s something you can do to save it. It’s simple — just add a fan.

If your unit is showing the two light RROD, open up the Xbox and take a look at the main heat-sink. You’re probably going to have to re-seat it with new thermal paste due to heat overload. That’ll fix your problem for a bit, but it’s more than likely going to happen again.

[Doyle] did this and it solved the RROD — but checking temperatures, he saw that the chip still hit about 80C in less than 30 seconds of being on! So he decided to add an extra fan.

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Arduino + Servo + Scotch Tape == An Interesting Conversation

January 24, 2015 by Will Sweatman 41 Comments

If one could temporarily remove their sense of humor and cast a serious look into a Rube Goldberg machine, they would not say to themselves “well that looks simple.” Indeed, it would almost always be the case that one would find themselves asking “why all the complexity for such a simple task?”

Too often in hacking are we guilty of making things more complicated than they really need to be. Maybe it’s because we can see many different paths to a single destination. Maybe it’s because we want to explore a specific path, even though we know it might be a little harder to tread. Maybe it’s just because we can.

But imagine approaching a hack as simply a means to an end. Imagine if you did not have all of that knowledge in your head. All of those tools at your disposal. How would this change your approach? When [yavin427] decided to automate the leveling up process in his favorite video game, odds are he had never taken a game controller apart. Had never touched an oscilloscope. Indeed, he might have no knowledge of what a transistor or microcontroller even is. While many of our readers would have taken the more difficult path and tapped directly into the TTL of the controller to achieve maximum efficiency; it is most likely that [yavin427] would not have known how to do this, and thus would not have seen the many other paths to his end goal that would have been obvious to us. Yet he achieved his end goal. And he did it far easier and with less complication than many of us would have done.

Thoughts?

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Console Controllers For JAMMA Boards

October 1, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 16 Comments

Back in the day, and by that we mean the late 80s and early 90s, arcade machines started using the JAMMA standard, a means for a single arcade board to be wired in to the controllers, video output, and other ephemera found in arcade cabinets. Since then, quite a few people have amassed a collection of these vintage arcade boards. Putting them to use requires a means of providing power, video output and controller connections. The usual way of wiring in a joystick and buttons is with a wiring harness, but [Mike] and [Jasen] are connecting Xbox 360 and PS3 controllers to their machines with the help of a Raspberry Pi Hat.

[Mike] and [Jasen] created Project Kajitsu to replace the expensive ‘Supergun’ controllers arcade game collectors usually use to play Street Fighter, X-Men, and Battletoads. They’re using the USB ports on a Raspberry Pi B+ to listen to two XBox or PS3 controllers and translate button mashing into something these old games can understand.

The guys are using a custom Linux Kernel that boots in just a few seconds, providing the bare minimum of an OS to support the controllers. The board itself is extremely simple; just a few bus transceivers, caps, resistors, and headers. They have an iPhone-quality vertical video proof of concept video (below), and although they’re still figuring out the best way to simplify the Bluetooth pairing process, they’re well on their way to supporting wireless controllers.

This board only provides controller input. If you have one of these old boards, you will need video output. That’s another project entirely, but very simple if you have an SCART monitor.

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Xbox 360 Slim Gets Gutted And… Painted White?

July 17, 2014 by James Hobson 15 Comments

XBox in a Briefcase

We love portable console builds, and this one by [Daniel Fürstauer] is no exception. It’s a beautifully hacked Xbox 360 slim into an aluminum briefcase — complete with a screen and a full audio system!

He started by gutting the Xbox 360 slim and throwing out pretty much all of the original enclosure, minus the disc drive cover. Now what he did next was completely for aesthetics, but freaking awesome. He actually took the motherboard out, taped off some of the important components, and spray painted the entire thing white! We’re not too sure what effect this will have on some of the components, but it seems to work, and gives it a really unique look underneath his Plexiglas enclosure.

He housed the rest of it (complete with custom cooling fans!) inside of one of those nice aluminum briefcases, complete with a widescreen LCD monitor, and computer speakers. He even fit the power supply inside — all you have to do is plug it in! There’s also room for at least one controller, whose holding spot doubles as space for the disc drive to eject. Continue reading “Xbox 360 Slim Gets Gutted And… Painted White?” →

The Homebrew XBox 360 And PS3 Portable

July 8, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 23 Comments

For the past few years now, [Downing] has been working on the dream of all console modders – a console made in the last ten years made portable. He’s spend a lot of time on the effort, and now thanks to a commission, he’s finally done it. Not just one console, either: this thing makes both the Xbox 360 and PS3 a handheld, battery-powered device thanks to some awesome wireless tech and a great deal of skill.

A few months ago, [Downing] and friends [Hailrazer] and [RDC] started a Kickstarter for the Cross Plane, a portable device that uses a wireless HDMI transmitter to offload the heavy and hot parts of running a game to a console, while the display and controls are kept portable. That Kickstarter didn’t see the success [Downing] was looking for, but that didn’t stop one enthusiastic supporter from commissioning a piece.

The display in the Cross Plane is a 7″ HD display, and the latency on the WHDMI transmitter is just about 1ms – basically unnoticeable. The controls on the front of the portable are wired to ‘controller packs’ that plug into the back, one for Xbox and one for PS3. The build quality is immaculate, and if you’ve ever wanted to know how to expertly finish a 3D printed part so it looks like it came off an assembly line, you should probably check out the build log.

Video walkthrough below.

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Dr. Frankenstein’s Wireless Xbox One Steering Wheel

March 31, 2014 by Kristina Panos 4 Comments

Buy an Xbox One controller and hack it immediately? That’s exactly what [tEEonE] did so he could merge it with a Simraceway SRW-S1 steering wheel. He loves racing games and was psyched to play Forza 5. He already had the steering wheel, but it’s strictly a PC peripheral. [tEEonE] wanted the wheel to control the steering, gas, and brakes and found both the XB1 controller and the SRW-S1 well-suited to the hack.

For steering, [tEEonE] substituted the SRW-S1’s accelerometer for the XB1’s left joystick pot. He connected the X and Y to analog pins on an Arduino Pro. Then he mapped the rotation angles to voltage levels using a DAC and wired that to the XB1 joystick output. The XB1 controller uses Hall effect sensors and magnets on the triggers to control the gas and brake. He removed these and wired the SRW-S1 paddles to their outputs and the XB1 controller is none the wiser.

He also rigged up a 3-point control system to control the sensitivity and calibrate the angles: a button to toggle through menu items and two touch modules to increment and decrement the value. These he wired up to a feedback interface made by reusing a 15-LED strip from the SRW-S1. Finally, he had space left inside the housing for the XB1’s big rumble motors and was able to attach the small motors to the gas and brake paddles with the help of some 3-D printed attachments. Check out this awesome hack in action after the break.

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