DISCLAIMER
Follow this tutorial at your own risk. Neither I, nor acidmods will be held responsible for any damage done to your controller. I, and I’m sure others as well, will assist in trouble shooting if you cannot get it to work. This is your controller, modify at your own risk.CG BOARD TOP TRACES
CG BOARD BOTTOM TRACES
Back - Light Blue
Guide - White w/Green Dot
Start - Orange
A - Green
B - Red
X - Blue
Y - Yellow
D-pad Up - Yellow w/Black Dot
D-pad Down - Green w/Black Dot
D-pad Left - Blue w/Black Dot
D-pad Right - Red w/Black Dot
LB - Pink
RB - Purple
LTh (Left Thumb stick button) - Pink w/White Dot
RTh (Right Thumb stick button) - Purple w/White Dot
LT (Wiper) Blue w/Red Dot
RT (Wiper) Red w/Blue Dot
Left Stick (Wipers) X,Y Axis
White w/Blue X
White w/Blue Y
Right Stick (Wipers) X,Y Axis
White w/Red X
White w/Red Y
I do not take credit for the above pictures and information. The above information was found at the following link >>>
NEW VERSION OF WIRELOESS CONTROLLER BOARD However, everything from here on, is my work.
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All of the XBYA traces are on the top of the board and some are on the bottom. I recommend using the traces on the top side because the ones on the bottom are hidden behind the trigger frame (whatever you want to call the thing around the potentiometer). The one good thing about the new CG (Common Ground) boards is that you only have to deal with 4 wires on the top of the board compared to 6 wires on the Matrix boards. The only other wire you need for the PCB is the ground and there’s an easily accessible one called TP22 on the bottom side. You can use any ground you want but TP22 is a large solder point, easy to access, and really hard to screw up.
The boxed in trace points are the ones I recommend using. You can use any ones you want, but I chose those because they were the safest ones when taking into account accidental solder bridging, original button interference, etc. I tried several different wiring paths and I kept running into one common problem with all of them; around the two thumb-sticks and the D-pad, on the top half of the controller shell is circular plastic pieces that make contact with the board to give it stability. Well the smallest thing underneath these plastic pieces (yes even this 30 gauge wire) interfered with the movement of the thumb-sticks and it did affect game play. Sure you can file them down. But why do that when there’s an even easier way to do it?
This was my best layout that completely bypassed the thumb-stick problem. The only thing you have to worry about here is making sure that the wires run between the buttons so that you can still retain the use of the originals. It’s not that hard though with this solid core wire, just try not to bend at a sharp 90 degree angle. There is a small space under the RB button where all 4 wires can be run under. Once the wire comes out from under the RB button and you’ve got the wire laid out on the board so it won’t interfere with any other buttons, hot glue right under the RB button and in at least one spot on the bottom side right along the trigger frame. I didn’t run the wires through the holes in the board at position J5 because I’m leaving that open for the COD rapid fire 3-mode board, and if I used that position now, I just have to file down a bit of the plastic around the D-pad. Not that big of a deal, but unnecessary with my wiring path.
Soldering to the actual trace points can be a bit tricky on either version of the 360 board, but especially on the newer CG boards due to the points being so close together (which is why I chose the soldering points that I did). You have to scrape material off the soldering points until you get to the shiny copper. I used a 10x magnifying glass very frequently to check to see if I’d hit the copper yet. To scrape, I used a razor blade with a very light touch and duct tape along the length of the blade I wasn’t using to protect myself and the board incase I slipped. I didn’t use a blade holder (box cutter handle, etc.), just the blade. When using a blade holder, people have a tendency to use excess pressure and that’s not optimal here. CONSTANTLY CHECK YOUR WORK! Once you get to the copper I highly suggest testing the connection before soldering to make sure that you didn’t scrape too far or cut any traces. What I did was take a wire, wrap it around the negative battery terminal, turned the controller on (held rechargeable pack against the back), entered a game, and then touched the other end of the wire to my newly scraped solder points to make sure that they do what they are meant to do. Also test the original buttons while you’re at it. If everything is working, you can solder the wire. I’m not going to walk you through the soldering because I can’t accurately describe how to do it. IMO it comes from experience. It’s assumed already that if you’re thinking of attempting this that you already know how to solder. However, if you don’t know how to solder, someone posted a video link to surface mount soldering that was very good but I can’t find it again. If anyone happens to know its location, please post and I’ll include it here.
I recommend using hot glue to protect the solder joints but not too much. Use the hot glue on the joints before you start moving the wire around. This gives the joint a little extra strength to help prevent breaking the wire, they are kind of fragile. Just a light coat will do. I squeezed a dab on a pencil eraser and dabbed it on each connection. Keeping the height down on the hot glue is critical to prevent interference with the rubber button strips (I ran into that problem too). Once you’ve hot glued the solder joints, you can move the wire carefully. Other than the 4 solder joints and right below the RB button, I don’t recommend hot gluing anywhere else on the top side of the board. Now you’ve got 4 perfectly run wires to work with.
As far as the buttons go, this is a little bit of trial and error. Figure out where you want to drill the holes but do your best to check for anything that might block it inside the controller. I find it easier to drill form the inside out so that you make sure no bracing is in the way. Although you could always cut it away if you’re adamant about the position you chose. Just be aware that other components may not allow the use of your chosen positions. The old saying, “Measure twice, cut once” doesn’t apply here. I use, “measure 20 times, cut once”. Trust me, the more you prepare and check your work before doing any irreversible mods, the better. I made the first mistake of using too big of a drill bit for the holes. I had to plug them and drill new ones.
Get your switches and hot glue them in place, all sides except for the side that you’ll be soldering to. Let the hot glue set and test the buttons. You should hear a very prominent ‘click’ from each one. If you don’t, then some hot glue probably got onto the button part of the switch. If that happens, just take it out, pull off all the glue, and try again. Now that all the switches are glued, it would be a good time to test the fitment again just to be sure. Assemble the entire controller except for the bottom gray piece and the top LB-RB-sync piece. You do this so that you can look inside when you mate the two halves of the shell. Check for interferences and modify as need.
After you’ve verified that everything will fit nicely, it’s time to start solder all the ground connections together. The entire board shares a ground so it’s pointless to run 4 wires from the board just for a ground connection when you only need one. What you want to do is solder the ground wire to the switches in series. Connect all the ground wires to the switches only for now. Don’t connect the last switch in the chain to the first switch in the chain though, it’s not needed. Once all the switch grounds are soldered, solder the ground wire from the board to the ground on the first switch in the chain. Then solder the positive wires you ran from the top of the board to whatever switch you’d like.
Now all that’s left is assembly. There’s more space in the bottom half of the controller than the top so there’s not much need to specify a spot to push the wires into. Just try to keep them away from the triggers. Screw it all together and you should be good to go.
