DIY SFC Wii Classic Controller

[qwertymodo]

I've really wanted one of these ever since I first heard of them, but they're always around $100 so I pretty much gave up on it until I came across this project and decided to give it a try and see if I couldn't build my own. Holy frak, the design is simple. Considering my last several microcontroller projects have involved USB, it was a wonderful relief, a project that even goes so far as to use the internal oscillator to reduce external components. I happened to be borrowing a friend's Arduino which uses one of the two AVR's that the Retroport Adapter targets, so I decided to breadboard one up, and other than one ambiguity in the schematic that took me awhile to figure out, I managed to get it working on the breadboard. Now, I'm going to order up some PCB's and mod a controller internally so it will, for all intents and purposes, look and function exactly like the official SFC Classic Controllers. I have to order PCB's in batches, either 3 or 10, depending on where I order from, so I'm going to have leftovers. If anyone's interested, let me know. I'd be willing to sell bare boards ($5), assembled boards ($10), or fully assembled controllers (price depends on a couple of factors).

[eggwolio]

I am super duper interested in this project. I definitely want one, possibly two or three. With the assembled board, how much work is left to be done before I have a fully working controller? I'm decent at soldering, but know nothing about programming chips and arduinos and whatnot.

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[qwertymodo]

An assembled board would also come programmed. You would have to remove the white cable header from the controller board and solder pins in its place, then mount this board in the pins. Then you just solder the 4 wires from the nunchuck to the appropriate pads and put it back together.

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[eggwolio]

That's simple enough. I'm in for two. What's the timeframe on this project?

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[qwertymodo]

Just ordered PCB's tonight. I'm hoping they'll come in shortly after New Years.

[qwertymodo]

Woohoo, managed to get a lot of 5 SFC controllers sold as-is for cheap on Ebay. As long as the shells aren't cracked and the PCB's are good (or at least fixable), I'll have them for building and selling pre-built controllers.

[Diminuendo]

I would be interested in one, but would it be a possibility to add tac switch contacts to act as a switch to swap the functionality of the SNES dpad between the analog stick and the classic controller Dpad.

if you make a GC version with the switch and rumble too I would be quite happy

[qwertymodo]

Why would you want a switch on a GC version? GC controllers already have separate D Pad and analog stick... also, the classic controller doesn't have rumble, so no chance of supporting it, sorry. I might consider the switch idea for an SNES controller on a one-time type deal for an extra charge...

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[Diminuendo]

lol I meant a SNES controller to GC rather than SNES to wii

[qwertymodo]

Ah, well I don't currently have code to output GC controller signals, so that would be considerably more work, which I'm not really interested in pursuing at the moment.

[eggwolio]

lol I meant a SNES controller to GC rather than SNES to wii

I believe retrousb still has SNES adapters for Gamecube available. They advertise them for Wii, but they go in the Gamecube ports. A little Googling and you should find them with no problem.

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[qwertymodo]

I'm pretty sure raphnet.net has SNES/N64->GC cables as well. I have no interest in them due to my shiny new WiiU having no GC ports.

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[qwertymodo]

Ok, I got PCB's in today. I didn't have any surface-mount Atmega328's on hand, so I tried using an Atmega8. It didn't work, but I'm not sure if it's the chip or the PCB or the soldering... anyway, I took pictures, so you can see how it looks. I'm really happy with the end result, even if it isn't working at the moment...

You can see I removed the cable header and mounted the board in its place:


Nice and clean on the front side of the PCB:


Here you can see it sits nice and flush against the controller board:


Clean and unobtrusive:


The controller closes back up nicely with absolutely no modifications to the shell:



I'm going to have to play around with it a bit more to see if I can figure out what's wrong with it, but for now, I'm still quite pleased with how it turned out

[qwertymodo]

Sweet, figured out the problem, the Atmega8 has a different clock multiplier than the 48/88/168/328, so the fuse bytes were wrong. Setting the correct clock multiplier fixed it right up



eggwolio, if you're wanting to buy populated and programmed boards and do the mod yourself, take a look at the photos. You will need to remove the white pin header from the controller's PCB (not shown in the photos, I'd already removed it), then simply align the holes on the adapter PCB with the ones left by the pin header, stick pins through the holes and solder. I used 22 gauge wire that I just snipped to the right length, since the pins are a non-standard pitch, so you can't get "real" pin headers for them (not easily anyway, and it's only 5 holes, just run the wire through, solder to one side, snip it to length and solder the other side. Just don't heat it too long or the wire might come loose and stick to the iron. Then, just attach the wiimote cable. The silkscreen labels match up to the OEM cable colors, but no guarantees if you use 3rd party cables. You don't need to attach the bare shielding wire if there is one, I just clipped it short. Here's the signal/color pairs:

Y - SCL
G - SDA
R - Vcc
W - Gnd

The pads on the bottom of the PCB are for programming the microcontroller, and can be left alone, since it will come pre-programmed.

[eggwolio]

Definitely still interested, but it may be a week or two before I actually "order" these. The holidays weren't as generous as I'd hoped. I was wondering something, though. Would it be possible to mount this in the female end of a SNES extension cable and thus have compatibility with any controller I choose?

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