harvysmoon
I am planning a button box for GT5. Does anyone have a layout plan for a PS3 controller printed circut board so you can solder switches direct to pcb appreciate any help.👍
I don't have one, but the easiest way to do it (in my opinion) is to very carefully scrape off the black coating on the PCB tracks where the button membrane is friction fit to the main board and solder onto those. It's a lot neater than soldering to the trigger points but the risk of lifting a track is huge so you have to be very careful and you definitely need to hot glue the wires down afterwards.
As for using the solder points, you could (gasp!) Google it, or spend some time with a pen, piece of paper and possibly a continuity meter (not necessary) to work out which pad leads to which solder point (labeled TP on the board).
Bear in mind you need to add two resistors, the small black squares on the button membrane have about 4.7k ohm resistance (I think) but (I think) you can use the standard 10k.
I realise that wasn't incredibly useful, but once I'm out of bed I'll post some better info.
Edit: Hmm, the page that I thought qualified as 'better info' was, in fact, not better info. Unfortunately Sony have released so many revisions of their controllers that it can be tricky to find a diagram of your exact controller anyway so you might be better off working it out for yourself anyway. I can tell you this, though; if you have a controller new enough that it doesn't have a small black plastic connector for the button membrane (and has two rows of black stuff-coated pads instead), the order of those pads is as follows:
1. L2
2. L1
3. Up
4. Left
5. Down
6. Right
7. Common left
8. PS button -
9. PS button +
10. Common middle
11. Select
12. Start
13. Common right
14. Resistor
15. Square
16. X
17. Circle
18. Triangle
19. R1
20. R2
A few notes:
- First, you need to have two resistors, one between pad 13 and 14 and the other between pad 7 and 8. Don't ask me why, because I don't know, but I've used a pair of 1/4 watt 4.7k ohm carbon film resistors with 5% tolerance (yellow, violet, red, bronze colour bands on a beige body) but I'm sure I read somewhere that someone used 10k ones, but I'm sure it probably doesn't even matter. The 'resistors' printed onto the button membrane are 4.7k, though.
- Secondly, you'll see that there isn't just a ground connection for all the buttons as you might expect, but a common for the left, middle and right sets of buttons. This means that if you short L1, L2 or the D-pad to common left, you'll get the appropriate response from the controller. Common middle is only for select and start, the PS button has its own two connections, and if you connect a button to the wrong common it causes the controller to switch off; I recommend that you do NOT do this as it could be damaging the controller.
- If you connect a variable resistor (i.e. a potentiometer with the middle and one other pin wired) between a button and the corresponding common, you can get analogue controls for any input (other than select, start and the PS button, of course).
- If you want to wire up the analogue sticks, first check whether they have 3 pins on each axis or four. If they have four, they're hall effect sticks and therefore require a little more work, if they're just three pins then you can desolder them (if you have the right stuff) and wire up your own potentiometer. If they're hall effect sticks, as all newer controllers are, there's an extra chip on your controller that needs to be interrupted (i.e. certain legs cut off) before you can solder your own inputs on. This is tricky, but can be done. To be honest, though, I've forgotten how I did it, so if this is something that you want then do let me know, otherwise I'll save myself some effort.
So, yeah, I personally think my method of using the pads is better than using the solder points, but as I said before it is a bit more fragile (I did lift a pad when I made my first one because of stupidly trying to desolder a wire without enough heat...) until you get it glued down. If you want it to be a little more sturdy, easier to solder but a lot less tidy I suggest you use my list as a starting point and get a multimeter with a continuity setting to test which solder point corresponds with which pad. When you start soldering to those points I recommend you heat the solder that's there first, add a small amount of fluxed Pb Sn solder (i.e. lead tin solder, which is very common and if you have some solder already I'm 99% sure it'll be the right stuff) and then solder your wire to it. If you tin the wire itself (add some solder to it) beforehand you'll find it much easier, too. Oh, and for god's sake, I really hope you've got a soldering iron with a small tip. A 5mm Maplin fire starter iron will make this very difficult, but needs must I suppose, I have a 0.8mm conical tip on my iron which was perfect for this.
Alternatively you could just buy a Cthulhu board which has screw terminals but doesn't do analogue inputs or wireless. Frankly as it's the same price as a
brand new PS3 controller I prefer to buy used or broken ones from Ebay and use those.
This may be my biggest post ever. (edit: oh, it isn't.)
