Voltages and circuit for visual 360 controller button pressing

[srgrelic]

Gents, I have a question for you since you're familiar with the voltages in the 360 controllers.

I have a project that I'm working on where I would like to attach an LED to each of the following buttons:

D-pad Up
D-pad Down
D-Pad Left
D-Pad Right
X button
Y button
A button
B button

When the button is activated, I would like the Corresponding LED to light, and still have the controller work.  What circuit would you build to achieve this goal?

I could (and would prefer) use an external power source if the voltage inside the controller wasn't great enought to light the LED itself.

The LED's don't have to be mounted on the controller itself, jumper wires out to an external LED board would be acceptable.

Any ideas?

[RDC]

You'll need to make sure you're using either the Wireless CG version off the controller or the Wired CL version first. The older Matrix versions of controller would be too big of a pain to do something like that really. There are 4 versions of the 360 controller right now, 2 Wireless and 2 Wired.

Wireless Matrix - http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=581887
Wireless CG - http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=618909

Wired Matrix - http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=581799
Wired CL - http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=635462

This can all be kept 'in controller' if ya really wanted too.

The Wireless CG board is Common Ground while the Wired CL board is a Common Line that has voltage (~1.2v) on it.

The Wireless controller isn't going to be a good for driving most colored LEDs, but if ya plan to use all Red or Yellow ones, they have a lower forward voltage, you'd be good. Since it's a common ground setup all ya have to do is wire the LEDs Anode to power (thru the proper value Resistor, source voltage in the Wireless is 2.5v~3v depending on where ya get it, the batteries + terminal or PnC + terminal wauld work fine) and then run the Cathode to the line for the button, press the button and there ya go.

With the Wired controller you'd have access to the 5v from the 360 and could use whatever color LEDs ya wanted, but there you'll be adding in Transistors/Resistors. Those button lines go high when the button is pressed, but since that ~1.2v isn't enough to light the LEDs you'd use that voltage when the button was pressed to turn on the Transistor that would then turn on your LEDs.

[srgrelic]

RDC,

That's one of the best responses I've recieved from any forum I've been asking this general question on.  But I must admit, I've been asking the question too generally on electronics boards, as in basic circuitry questions.

You've given me ample information to study for me to word my question better, I've got to go over these voltages and whatnot in the circuit simulator I'm using.

I'd like to use the transistor (or optoisolator if possible?) to act as a relay for an external power source like an arduino board to power the LED.  You don't see an issue with driving an LED or transistor (or again an optoisolator) from the line voltage?  If this doesn't interfere with the "button press" action, then I'd have exactly what I'd need.

Any ideas on whether or not multiple button presses concurrently (i.e. DD, DU, X, A) would drop the voltage on any of those lines below the ~1.2v?

[RDC]

Ya shoulda hit the 360 Case/Hardware Modding section of the XS forums first then.

It's 1.8v on that common line of the Wired CL controller, close to that ~1.2v I mentioned earlier but that was off the top of my head.

You can press as many buttons as ya want and the 1.8v stays the same on all lines, though if ya plan to push DU and DD at the same time you'll break your thumb or the controller.

There's no issue driving a Transistor from the lines, though if ya want to completely isolate it from whatever you're working on an optocoupler/optoisolator would be best, just get ones that will work good around 1.5v~1.8v on the LED side.

Using the CG version of the Wireless controller is pretty much the same deal, though it's lines just go low (to ground) when pressed. That's why either the CG or CL version of board is much better suited for what ya want to do.

[RDC]

Just wanted to update this thread with a little more info.

This can be done with a Wired CL controller or Wireless CG one pretty easily and in a few different ways. Here it is done with a Wired CL version controller and bread board using 3904 Transistors and a few Resistors, all powered from the 5v from the controller, which comes from the 360. The 1.8v ya get when a button is pressed is used to turn on the Transistor which then turns on the LED..



(crappy) Video of working and it does not change how the controller works, if ya turn up the sound ya can hear the blades in the dash moving, just didn't get a shot of the TV is all..



It can also be done with FETs or OptoCouplers as discussed above, here is one of the LEDs done with an OC and using them has a couple of advantages. First ya isolate the controller from whatever ya want to turn on/off, so using an alternate power source or whatever becomes less of a headache, Secondly it ends up being 1 part (the OC) per button with 3 solder connections to make instead of 3 parts per button if ya used FETs or Transistors because of the Resistors also needed.




Doing this on the Wireless CG controller would be pretty much the same deal, with the exception that it's button lines go low (ground) instead of high like the Wired CL board does, so you'd have to use PNP Transistors (3906) instead on it.

[redryno1221]

Cool good work