Abstract: Create an Arcade Controller
for Xbox/PC with a Mobile Suit/SSF4 Theme
Status: Complete (2013)
I decided at
some point to create something for Jay (after the first Protoman
helmet, before the Zeon NES) for Christmas 2012. That did not
happen. It ended up being a nightmare-project from hell that took me
weeks to work the bugs out of. I am not an electronics expert, nor
am I a carpenter, but I ended up making a complete, working, reliable
arcade controller using real Suzo-Happ parts, real arcade parts, real
Cherry switches, and for less than $150.
If
you peek at my blog, you'll notice I didn't post here for six months.
That happens. But before that, there was a period of an entire year
where there are no posts. This project was conceived and completed
in that time period, which is a big reason why it never made it up
here. Because of that, some of the info on here is incomplete and
might not be 100% right (my memory is shit). This is not a guide
exactly, because I can't cover all my bases and show you how to do
this. I can however point you in the right direction and show you
what I made with rudimentary tools and a few favors. I
will warn you, the only way to write this article is long and boring.
From here, I'm going to summarize
what I did, then show pictures. At the end of the post is a write-up
about how hard it was and what materials I used. You can skip that
part if you just wanted to see the project and how it turned out.
A
Not-So-Christmas Present
The history of this project has a lot to do with why I never put it
on here. I am guilty of procrastination, getting into things too
heavily, and having a bit of an ego when it comes to building things.
I tend to wait till the last minute then spend 18 straight hours on
a project. Many times, I don't finish it when it's supposed to be
done for some dumb, simple reason. This project is exactly that
sort.
On the night of our yearly Friendmas holiday party, I staggered into
my friends basement, late, covered in facial hair, holding a broken
arcade controller. I sat it down in front of the friend who I had
made it for, next to the TV stand, and plopped down hard on the floor
nearby. I had not slept more than 3 hours in the past two days, and
the project was a total failure. I had literally been working on
figuring out a wiring bug 15 minutes ago, gave up, and came to the
party.
My friend was understanding, and enjoyed the silly artwork I made for
it. But I felt very unsatisfied. I wanted the damn thing to work.
I stayed up and didn't eat in order to make it work, and it was for
nothing. I felt sorta shitty, and ended up falling asleep sitting up
on the couch later, missing out a bit on one of the last times all my
friends were all in the same place. It was a bit gloomy. But fuck
that noise.
Why do I suck?
Basically, I underestimated how difficult this project really is. In
concept, you are just wiring up new buttons to a PCB, and sticking it
all together in a box. I took a X360 controller, put it in a
RadioShack project box, screwed it into wood with stand-offs, and
wired up the contacts to the Suzo-Happ buttons I bought over the
internet. In theory, it would take me about a week to do. In
practice, it actually took over a month to get all the wood cut and
sanded correctly, getting the joystick jigged and beveled into place
was a bitch, and cutting glass and fitting it snugly onto the face of
the project was a nightmare.
How was it made?
Firstly,
I did not own a table saw, so I had to ask an uncle of mine to cut my
wood for me, which he graciously did. After, I had to re-cut the
wood slightly because all
of my measurements were wrong in my plan,
and began test fitting all the parts. I used a Dremel saw to cut the
hardboard sheet out in the proper size, and fitted that as well.
One
of the most difficult parts was mapping the button cut-outs onto the
top-most MDF. Because the buttons go through the Lexan, hardboard,
MDF, and
the artwork, lining everything up perfectly is absolutely paramount.
I fucked that up.
So, I cheated slightly. I went to the hardware store, bought
another hole-saw that was larger than I needed, and cut the holes in
the MDF slightly larger than they needed to be, but still making sure
the holes in the Lexan and the hardboard were as close as possible.
This gave me enough wiggle room to make it all fit together, and it
was still a small enough hole that the buttons could lock into place
underneath. After 3-4 days of doing this, I printed out the artwork,
cut holes in it, and discovered I would need to mask the sides of the
Lexan to hide the fact that my artwork print needed to be longer than
a 8.5x11 sheet a paper, the largest I could print on hand. That's
fine, I had already planned on taping off the inside of the Lexan and
painting a boarder, so I just adjusted the plan so that the black
boarder was larger, and it hid all my mistakes.
After I fitted each piece together with tape and a tiny bit of glue, I broke it all apart and finish sanded each piece. I then glued the base parts back together, screwed in the screws, inserted my corner studs, and waited for the base to dry. Once that was dry and solid, I drilled holes for the computer case feet, and glued them in. I also drilled holes for the top piece (the MDF/Lexan/artwork/hardboard) to be drilled down to the base. At this point, I realized drilling once screw to hold all of these pieces in was a bad idea. So, I drilled a secondary set of holes through the MDF, board, and glass, and actually sandwiched those pieces together separately. I drilled a through-hole through the Lexan, and screwed the large wood screws through, so they actually set entirely beneath the Lexan piece, and aren't attached. This way, you aren't putting structural stress on the Lexan, and if you need to take the top off, you don't run the risk of your Lexan peeling up and cracking on wood screws when you back them out. Trying to countersink the Lexan in order for the heads of the screws to sit in them would have been a gigantic headache, and over-tightening the screws even slightly would have ruined the whole project.
In order to hold the glass piece on securely on all sides, I bought a
pack of small screws and nuts at RadioShack. I drilled four small holes for the Lexan/HB/MDF and very carefully screwed them all together.
I know, at this point, it might be confusing how it all went
together. Essentially, you have the base with the PCB inside, then
you have the upper piece, which starts with the MDF base on the
bottom, hardboard above that, artwork, then the Lexan. The joystick,
without the ball attached, is sunk down into the MDF and screwed in.
The hardboard, artwork, and Lexan sit on top of it. Lastly, the
buttons are pushed through the holes up top, then fixed to the bottom
with their built-in fasteners. The whole top is now screwed together
with the small radio shack screws. Then the wires from the PCB are
attached to the joystick and buttons, then you sit all that in place
and drill the 4 large wood screws in place. That's how I put
everything together.
Electrical
Finale
What
was my key mistake that made me lose my mind and ruin Christmas
forever? My plan to use terminals. If you don't know what I mean,
Google wire terminals. They are strips with contacts on both sides
where you connect wires together, essentially so you don't have to
twist wires or solder wires together if you're working on a project
with lots of wire running around everywhere. I had 2 inside this
project; one from the PCB to the top switches and one from the PCB to
the control switches (start, select, Xbox button) and joystick. In
my lack of sleep, I
mixed up every single ground wire on the entire project.
I had to take the entire innards apart, label every single wire, then re-run each connection one-by-one in order to make it work correctly. I did this by having my wiring diagram in front of me on paper, and having Super Street Fighter IV open on my PC. I don't suggest playing with live wires connected to a computer, but by that point it seemed like the only way to test the damn thing without having to wire everything up, pulling wires, and trying again, over and over. Eventually, it was done.
I had to take the entire innards apart, label every single wire, then re-run each connection one-by-one in order to make it work correctly. I did this by having my wiring diagram in front of me on paper, and having Super Street Fighter IV open on my PC. I don't suggest playing with live wires connected to a computer, but by that point it seemed like the only way to test the damn thing without having to wire everything up, pulling wires, and trying again, over and over. Eventually, it was done.
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| Mock-up layout. Paid careful attention to the braces and the side buttons. You can see where the MDF top piece screws in. Note the rubber washers, which allow fine-tuning of the angle of the main board and prevent shock and over tightening. |
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| Unfortunately blurry, but you can see what I meant by lots of wire and messiness. You can also see the 8 screw-holes necessary to attach everything. |
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| IT WORKS! |
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| You can see here my final button placement, and how the screws worked. |
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| The cable is actually wrapped around a screw with heat-shrink wrapped around it so it doesn't pull out the PCB. |
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| The 1-Player button is actually the XBox button. |
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| These two side buttons are Start and Back. |
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| Photo credit: Jay Jones |
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|
After all the other reasons why I didn't post this before, there is
actually one major one I haven't mentioned. Shortly after finishing
this project, I was working on some of my early video stuff. In a
move to make more space, I reorganized files on my computer, deleted
some old backups, and moved stuff to another hard drive. Do you see
where this is going? I accidentally deleted everything I had on it.
Everything.
I had to run a program to 'un-delete' FIFTEEN THOUSAND PICTURES (ACTUALLY FIFTEEN THOUSAND) and
various other files in order to find the pictures I have for you
here. Jay was kind enough to take more and send some to me after he
received the most recent project, but these are really all there is.
There was video lost forever as well, but that's just the
way it goes I guess. I hope you enjoyed what little I have left on
it.
 |
| Actual picture I took when the project was over. |
Want to make your own? (You can skip this part.)
Firstly,
if you are interested in playing a PC or console game using real
arcade buttons and joysticks, you need to look around. If you can
find something used, something someone else made, that will be your
best bet. At the time when I made this, there was no product that
used real buttons and parts that was in my budget. Nowadays, a lot
of people just go with X-Arcade's stuff. Some people argue it's not
the greatest, others will argue that you need to go fuck yourself.
I've never used it, nor do I know you, I can't make those judgments.
All I know is I wanted to make it myself, I wanted the real
buttons that are really used in real Street Fighter cabinets, and I
wanted it to connect to a PC or Xbox 360.
The very first thing I did, before
anything else, was look for wiring diagrams of a Xbox 360 controller.
Due to the added complexity of hiding a play and charge pack/battery
pack in the device, I settled on the standard, wired version of the
360 controller. This is how I discovered Slagcoin.com. If you are at
all serious about doing this, go to Slagcoin.com right now, and just
look at shit. All of my templates and wiring diagrams are from this
website, and the person that runs it is a lovely human being. On that
site, I found a PCB layout, with notation, for the early-type X360
controller. From here, I priced out everything. Before you look
at the list below, understand I live in the middle of nowhere, so I
had to depend on Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Slagcoin has
'Example Ingredients' on their page
which you might want to take a look at, because it's better in every way.
Below is the list of things this
controller is made from (all in inches):
1 sheet 12x8x.5 MDF
1 sheet 11.25x7.25x.25 MDF
1 sheet 11.25x7.25x.93 Acrylic Glass
1 sheet of 10.5x6.5x.125 Hardboard
2 pieces of 12x3/8x3/8 (.375) Poplar
2 pieces of 7.25x3/8x3/8 Poplar
2 pieces of 8x1.5x.75 Poplar
1 piece of 10.5x1.5x.75 Poplar
1 piece of 10.5x1.5x.25 MDF
4 pieces of 1.5x1 3/16x1 Scrap Wood
(glued into the corners for strength
Essentially, you have a base (biggest
piece), then 4 sides, then 4 blocks in the corners that are glued in,
then a inner cover made of MDF, then on top of that a piece of
hardboard (which is like cardboard made from wood bits, kinda) then
topped with acrylic glass.
Aside from those materials, I used:
1 sheet of paper with artwork
printed on it
1 Sanwa
JLW-TM-8 (4
or 8-way switchable Joystick, ball type)
10 vertical-type Suzo-Happ Arcade
buttons, Street Fighter colors
1 Shallow-Mount
1-Player arcade button
Various wood screws
White, plastic, screw head caps
Various electronics screws
from RadioShack (with nuts, various sizes)
Old computer case feet
PCB stand-offs
Solder
Rubber Washers (between MDF and your braces, where the MDF screws in)
Rubber Washers (between MDF and your braces, where the MDF screws in)
Terminal Strips (I
set this up with terminal strips to make it easy to change the PCB
later, the buttons and outer casing can be re-used with a different
PCB to make it work with any console if you upgrade later.)
Electrical Tape
Heat-Shrink Tubing
Electrical Spade Connectors
A Shitload of Wire (I
already had a bunch of 20-gauge solid-core wire around, it made it
very easy to test everything on a bench, but solid core wire is more
breakable and harder to hide and coil, so you might want stranded,
shielded wire if you're trying this, check Slagcoin.)
Spray paint
A shitload of tape
Tools:
Power drill and lots of bits
Dremel
Hole-saws,
multiple diameters. I think you're going to need a 24mm and 30mm.
Art program
to make artwork with (I just drew everything in Photoshop with Google
image references)
A Jig Saw to
cut out where the Joystick sits
Routing tools
to countersink the joystick, I actually used a Dremel and a sanding
block (it took 4 hours, easily the hardest part) but actual routing tools are better
Wood glue
and a spreader, like a popsicle stick
Glass cutter
Soldering Gun
Hairdryer
Hot Glue Gun and lots of glue
A lighter (for hard-to-reach
heat-shrink tubing)
Wire Cutters/Strippers
Rubber Washers
That's everything.
I know I already
said this isn't a guide, but you can use this article as a
jumping-off point to look into your own project. I just wanted to
let you know the trouble, and tools, it takes to make something like
this. I'm happy I stuck it out and made something this complicated
for the experience of doing it. If you don't want that, then this
project is not for you. I cut myself, burned myself, and slept very
little while working on this thing. I also broke a sheet of glass
over myself, stabbed myself with a drill, and spend a lot of money on
extra shit I didn't need. It was a pretty swell time, all told.
...I just wanted to
let you know how hard it was.
THE END!?
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