PulseVU 2 Installation [TUT/VID]

[Timmy]

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

As many of you know edhel did a write up on this some while ago, however, if you had tried his method you would come to find that it does not work. This tutorial is a method that is 100% certain to work provided it is followed correctly. The Video at the bottom is proof of this.

The PulseVU 2 is a lighting effects modchip made by SICKmods.net, it has several lighting modes, is cost effective and quite frankly awesome to work with and use. F00f00 made a video of an install he did with the Wii prototype which required several capacitors to work, but let me tell you that it is no longer necassery Modes include fading and Music pulse all in a very small chip

On to the tutorial

What You Will Need

Soldering Iron
Solder
Glue/Double Sided Tape
Wire
DS Lite (Or a Sandwich Press)
PulseVU 2
LED's
Tactile Switch (Optional) or other MOMENTARY switch

The Procedure

1) Tin the pads on your pulse vu 2



2) If you want to use an external switch such as a tactile you will want to do this small bit of soldering while it is out of the console, sickmods made the following diagram



At this stage you just prepare the right hand side of the ciruit, i used a SMD resister but Axial ones (larger) will work fine



3) The following is the best possible spot to glue or tape in your pulse vu 2, it's easy to access, close to practically every point and not constrained, i glued mine in with Araldite epoxy glue



4) Now its time to start soldering in the pads, Connect the + to the battery terminal point on the front of the motherboard, ensure that you insulate it with tape as it will short with the screen heat shielding



5) Connect the - pad to any ground in the console, i used the following



6) If you are using an external switch here's the sickmods schematic again:



And here's where i put mine, and how to wire it up, there are two tabs on the back of the tactile to solder to, im sorry they are not pictured.



6a) If you want to use one of the ds lites buttons for the mode switcher i recommend the start button, just neglect step 2 and solder the SW pad to the following point



If you want to use another button heres the test point names of all the other buttons on the ds lite mother board

P00- A
P01- B
P02- Select
P03- Start
P04- Right
P05- Left
P06- Up
P07- Down
P08- R
P09- L
R00- X
R01- Y

7) Pad PO tells the pulse vu whether or not the console is on, this is important if you want to have different lighting effects for when the console is off or on, if you dont need this just connect PO to a ground and it will always have the effect for ON in each respective mode. But if you do want different effects for ON and OFF use the following point or any other point that switches between 0v when the console is off and 3.3v when on, so long as it doesn't exeed the voltage given to the + pad



8) AL and AR are the audio points for the left and right speakers respectively, connect them to the following points



9) Its time to connect up some leds! Connect up the negatives (blue in the picture) to the VU point on the PulseVU 2 and as for the positives you can find any + Point on the mobo (using appropriate resistance) , but please note that the slot 2 + point will not work as it cannot handle the forward reaction voltage. The pulsevu 2 comes with a 300ohm resistor and a pad on either side that is usually used for the wii, what you can do is connect your led positives to one side and the other side to the + pad. If you are using many led's (5 or more) lower the resistance value, or bridge it, lowering it any case will give brighter results so long as you dont blow the leds.



10) And heres what it looks like (sorta) when done! Sorry about the restricted bit, thats a mod im not ready to reveal yet



AFTERMATH

Usin the PulseVU 2 is as easy as holding the switch down and waiting for you mode to come up and then releasing, the modes are determined by a series of 4 flashes each one either being short or long. The full mode list and there combinations plus info on certain special modes is available here:

http://diy.sickmods.net/Our_Products/PulseVU/Usage/

VIDEO

The following video is half demonstration half tutorial, the tutorial half showing you how to callibrate your PulseVU 2 to handle the DS Lites audio, it comes pre callibrated to the nintendo Wii. Be sure to pay atttention to the video and do BOTH callibrations and you will be fine

The SICKmods callibration MP3 is available here

http://diy.sickmods.net/files/calibrate_pulsevu2.mp3

Video 1: Callibrating

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXajTO5ylXE

Video 2: Demonstration

http://www.youtube.com/v/AT1fqnIvirU

[decy90]

Timmy that is an awesome tutorial which im sure will help countless numbers good job!!

[seikene]

Nice work on the tut remake . BTW, I bet I'll find out by the end of this month, so I'll make a guess and say internal rumble pak :P

[Timmy]

Thanks for the comments guys

made some changes to some typos that the SICKmods team picked up, also note that the resister on teh pvu2 is 300ohms so you will probably definitely want a lower value

close seikene but no cigar

[Tri-edge]

internal ram?

[Timmy]

that is but one small part of it

[Timmy]

just as an update hence the bump

the video will be coming in about 4 hours when its a bit darker here, trust me your patience will be rewarded, i replaced the 300ohm resister with a 100ohm one and WOW the chance is incredible

i love making mod videos involving audio for a bit of a sync challenge

someone post after this one so i dont have to do a triple post

[MARIOPARTY53]

just as an update hence the bump

the video will be coming in about 4 hours when its a bit darker here, trust me your patience will be rewarded, i replaced the 300ohm resister with a 100ohm one and WOW the chance is incredible

i love making mod videos involving audio for a bit of a sync challenge

someone post after this one so i dont have to do a triple post

awesome dude cant wait

lol most likly catch it later cuz I will be sleeping lol

[Tri-edge]

that is but one small part of it

internal ram and rumble?

[seikene]

LOL Timmy, you made a bit of a mistake censoring all of your pictures  *play phoenix wright "I caught a contradiction in your testimony music*. THE PICTURE UNDER NUMBER 5 IS SHOWING CLEARY WHAT YOU WILL DO TO YOUR SLOT 2!!! Anyway yeah I can see what you're doing, you sly fox :P, but don't worry I'll keep it secret, and I highly doubt alot of members will get it ;D. Don't worry other AM members, I'm not calling you dum .

[Timmy]

negative, from those pictures you cannot see clearly what im doing as you can only see a section of ONE pcb, there is MORE then one and best part is only ONE of them, the ONE you can see is anything you will have EVER seen before

btw youtube is down for maintanence, no video until they finish

[Morpheus2]

what size switch do i need and dont i need two switches if you want to turn it off all together?

[Timmy]

nope just one switch

any size and shape as long as its just momentary, like only active when being held down, magnetised or whatever

oh and VIDEO UP

Mode 1 will turn off leds completely, see the video

[Morpheus2]

what size did you use?

[*FuFa]

what size did you use?

The size is unimportand. Also it's best to go with the smallest you can find.

I dare you people to turn this into a penis joke.

[Timmy]

so niglitdoobie  you should be fine

j/k , just obliging the gaping joke

[seikene]

Wow so random for Fufa to talk here :P. Even more random for him to AVOID a penis joke XD. Anyway Timmy, I can only guess. So I say this: You either got:
A) A GBA game/rom that you somehow rewrote with other codes relating to your mods
B) A GBA rom that was meant for the DS, probably something like the M3 real, which I guess you soldered on there and probably set a switch to keep the DS from always going to the rom's boot mode :P.

[Timmy]

nope and nope

btw videos have been changed, into two better ones 

[Tri-edge]

your not answering my question...

[Timmy]

unh ive aknowledged ram is part of it and i will tell you now no rumble is not part of it

now stay one topic lol

[*FuFa]

nice tutorial, you made it even better than mine :P

Honestly, I wouldn't call yours a tutorial, it was just blindly wrote up, power for the pvu and a random button for it to change mode which wouldn't even work because you didn't look into the PVU at all to notice that you need to modify buttons to make them work.

[*FuFa]

and thats your opinion bro 

It's not a opinion, it's a fact. Also I'm not your bro.

[Ilzwalrus]

Very nice work man.
Well done.

[Morpheus]

Anybody who has accomplished this mod have a problem with the chip placement in the tutorial. i put the pulsevu2 in the spot on the tutorial but the part that holds the stylus in place gets in the way of the soldering points.

[Timmy]

you must have put it a little high up, but theres plenty of other places it can go such as up in the top screen area

[GralGrievous]

Is it possible to use the PulseVU in other electronics like a regular stereo system? where would I connect the pads to?

[Josho]

Hey! I know it's been a while, but I have a couple of questions. I want to do this.

Is the power LED a good enough source for for PO?

Also, I'm looking at getting a soldering iron for this, 15W?

Cheers!

[PspKicks316]

He's not even here anymore. This thread is well over a year old, please don't post in it. It's against the rules.
Make a new topic regarding this so you get more help.
I personally have not done this mod so I can't help, sorry.

[Josho]

Sorry and all, but the topic was on the third page.

The last reply wasn't too long ago and I know people hate duplicate threads, and it takes up less bandwidth just replying here.


Never mind then, I'll have to experiment.

Where did Xion go anyways?

[PspKicks316]

Changed his name, then a while later he left. 

[Josho]

Sucks!

Wonder why....

[Wallydraigle]

Lots of good info here.  I've favorited this for when I install mine.  One question, though.  The picture in step 5 where you show where you soldered the ground wire doesn't seem to work.  Can you post that again please?  Well, two questions.  What are those three pads for on the bottom of the PulseVU board?

[Timmy]

Well just in case your problems have not been solved for some reason lol

a) Yes you can use the LED as a source for PO but you must use the negative
b) Yeah that soldering iron should do
C) You don't have to use that ground in step 5....srsly....any ground in the ds lite will do man
d) Don't worry about them read the sickmods site if you really want to know