~~::Guide To Adding L.E.Ds To A Gamecube Controller::~~

Adding LEDs to a Gamecube controller circuit is a fairly straightforward mod for anyone with any electronics and/or soldering experience. ***DISCLAIMER*** I accept no responsibility for damage to persons or property from attempting to use the information in this guide. Use this information at your own risk.*** That said, only a few simple tools are needed for this project, and they are:

- Triwing or 2mm flathead screwdriver
- Low power Soldering Iron (15-25W)
- 60/40 rosin core electronics solder
- LEDs
- Resistors (more on these later)
- Hookup wire (22 gauge or higher ideally)
- Basic soldering and electronics knowledge (how to solder, what series/parallel are, what basic components do)

There are two* ways to wire the LEDs into the controller, depending on how you want them to act in the finished product. We're going to be using the power supply for the rumble motor for this, so Wavebird owners, you're outta luck. You wouldn't want to be running LEDs off of AA batteries anyhow. Now this is a curious, but understandable, quirk in the controller's design: The rumble motor is powered by a separate source from the data processors of the rest of the controller. Yet the distribution of power is actually controlled by the other source. This presents us with an interesting range of possibilities for this mod, with or without normal rumble motor functionality. The possible wiring arrangements are:

- Always on (in parallel with rumble circuit)
- Flashing (in parallel with or in place of rumble motor itself)

* There's actually a third way to do it, but it's not compatible with either of the other two ways, disables the rumble, and has special conditions regarding the circumstances of it's functionality. It was the first mode I found when putting LEDs in controllers, but I find either of the others or a conjunction of the two to be superior to this one. I will include a small note about it at the end.

Part One: Opening the Controller

I'm going to assume that you already understand the basics of electronics wiring, including how to solder, so we can get onto the actual installation procedures. This portion is common to all modes. The first thing we must do is open the gamecube controller, just like you would for painting it. Turn it face down and remove the back half of the controller using a triwing or 2mm flathead (and a little patience), and set it aside for now. Carefully pull the turn of the cord off of its post and lift the circuit board from the front shell of the controller. You'll notice, among other things, two particular runs of wire. These are the six wires that compose the controller cord, and also the two wires that connect the rumble motor to the circuit board, and it is these two areas that we will be focusing on. The different configurations will involve making connections to one of these two places.

Always-On Mode

This mode piggybacks the LEDs on the rumble supply voltage, and runs it in parallel. Using this mode, your LEDs will be lit whenever your controller is plugged into a powered on system (even a Wii on standby).

Take a look at the base of the controller cord, where the six wires are soldered to the board. This assembly is called a header, and in this header you will find a blue, yellow, red, green, white, and black wire. The wires we're interested in are the yellow one (the voltage supply) and the black one (ground).

For this mode, we're going to need a resistor in the LED circuit path. This is because LEDs are current driven devices. Without a resistance in series with them, basically they like to explode. Now, not everyone is going to want to configure their controllers the same way (and not all colors of LEDs have the same voltage rating) so I'd recommend visiting http://ledcalc.com/#calc. I like this site because it has many modes and even suggests some typical voltage ratings of different colored LEDs if you don't know or aren't sure of what you're going to be using.

Once you find your resistance values and have obtained your resistor(s) and LED(s), you can get started tying them into the controller circuit. We're going to run the resistor in parallel with the path of the yellow wire (if you decide to use multiple resistors, they'll all be in parallel with each other. Follow the diagram given to you on the LED site). You're going to cut the yellow wire in about half, and strip off some ends to work with. make a loop in the leg of the resistor, and you're going to solder both ends to the loop.

You now have a resistor sticking off of your yellow wire, and from here it's your discretion as to how you want to array your LEDs. I'll use a single LED as an example here. You'll be using hookup wire to make runs to other parts of the controller if you're looking to do that. Look for information on basic wiring and/or practice soldering runs of wire together in different patterns until you're sure you know what you're doing.

In our example, we're only using one LED, so the only thing to do is solder the positive end (the long leg) of the LED to the free end of the resistor. You can trim it if you need to, just be sure you know how to tell the ends apart. LEDs only work one way. Solder the positive leg of the LED to the end of the resistor, and then we're going to connect the other end of the LED (or another bit of wire solder onto it) to the black wire in the same way we did with the resistor. Cut the black wire in half, get some stripped ends, and connect all three of your parts together. To test your circuit, just plug your controller into a Gamecube or Wii and turn it on. If the LED lights up, good job. If not, check to see if the LED is still good, or if you wired it the wrong way.

If you're planning on doing more complicated LED runs, remember to research wiring practices and techniques. I can't go through and give a detailed explanation for every possible combination, because there is, literally, an infinite number of possibilities.