XBox Arcade Stick - Planning
The Xbox 360 controller
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The D-Pad and face buttons (A,B,Y and X) are funky switches.
Each button sits on a rubber support that acts like a spring.
This provides resistance when the button is pushed and has a conductive pad that sits above the circuit board.
Under this pad is a pair of semi-circle copper traces.
When a button is pushed, the pad gets smushed onto the traces completing the circuit.
Since these are basic switches, we can connect an arcade switch to each side of the copper trace under a button.
This way, when the arcade button is pressed, the controller acts like a normal button press occured.
The top shoulder buttons are normal push buttons meaning we can wire arcade buttons to these as well.
Due to the funky way the controller is set up, we can't use a common ground.
That just means that we need to run a wire from both sides of every button.
Connections
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There are thirteen pairs of connections that need to be made for the six 'action' buttons, the joystick and the function buttons. Four pairs will connect the D-pad to the joystick switches. A pair from the X,Y,A and B buttons will go to four of the action buttons (colored appropriately). The top shoulder buttons will go to two additional white action buttons. Lastly, three pairs of connections will go from the start, back and Guide button (the funky Green logo thing) to smaller Sanwa buttons. I wanted the cool LED ring from the controller that shows the player number but these are surface mount LEDs. I'm confident of my soldering, but not THAT confident.
Button Layout
