Delve Into Lunacy

Overview

Right off the bat I need to thank Beacon over at GrownUpGamers.com for providing us with the tutorial for installing kill switch and star power buttons on the Xbox 360 Guitar Hero controller. It’s not a hard mod but considering I was teaching myself electronics, soldering, etc on this mod it was a huge help.

I wanted to take Beacon’s mod a step further however and move the star power button to a pedal that I could plug into the guitar. Also, since the list of parts varies based on which pedal you are doing, I didn’t include a parts list. I do have links to where you can get each part that I used following the mention of each part in the post.

Modifying the Controller

I won’t cover all the details about where to hook up wires to the circuit board inside the guitar since Beacon did a great job of that in his tutorial. Plus, I didn’t take any pictures while doing the mod and getting the main circuit board back on it’s posts was a tight fit and I didn’t feel like taking it off again. I did only connect the pedal wires to the main circuit board however. For the kill switch, I soldered the wires to the points on the strum bar circuit board.

I used a very tiny drill bit to drill the initial hole for both the kill switch and the mono phone jack. From there I just kept increasing the size of the bit to make the hole a little larger and then used my Dremel with the 1/8" cutting tool to fine tune the size of the hole. Basically, just make the hole a little larger, test to see if the button fits yet, cut, test, etc until you reach that point where the button barely fits through.

For the kill switch button I tried two different ones. The first was a smaller one where the button is round and attaches to a post ($3 for 2 here). This one works fine but there are a few things I didn’t like about it. For starters, it’s not long enough to fit the threads all the way through both layers of plastic so you have to hot glue it into place. Secondly, if you mess up the hole there isn’t anything on the outside to really cover it up. Third, since the button connects to a post (pops on and off) you have to push straight down on the button. For fast songs if I started pushing at a slight angle the button would feel like it was going to stick.

To remedy the above issues I decided to use a larger square button ($3 here) which I just love. First off, this button is larger so it just feels better to the touch on extended use. Secondly, it has a shroud at the bottom of the button that will cover any mistakes if you made the hole a hair too large. Thirdly, it is long enough that you won’t need to use hot glue to keep it in place and last but not least, since it’s not based on the post implementation there is not "stickiness" problem when pressing it down at an angle.

Once I had the button mounted to the plastic I just soldered a wire from each lead on the button to the two down strum leads on the strum bar circuit board.

After finishing the kill switch I mounted a 1/4" mono phone plug ($4 for two here) in the second hole. After you have it mounted just solder on the wires that you’ve connected to the main circuit board per Beacon’s tutorial and you’re done.

Here are some pictures of the inside of the controller once the mods were completed.

Creating the Roland Foot Switch

I began by trying a Roland FS-1 foot switch ($25 here). I needed to begin by removing the button it came with since it was an on/off type of switch and I needed a momentary switch. I installed a black push button that I got at Radio Shack ($2.50 here).

It is a hair too large for the hole in the foot switch but I could still screw (aka wedge) it in there so it was quite snug. The top of the switch case dips down so this actually worked to my advantage since it still stuck up over the top of the sunken area. Once you have it secured just re-solder the cable back onto the new button.

Here are some pictures of the switch in it’s final state.

Creating the Boss Guitar Pedal

The one downside of using the Roland foot switch is that the button is fairly small. I found a few different times in songs where I was unable to find the button with my toe. So for that reason I decided to create version two using an actual guitar pedal.  I settled on the Boss Bass Chorus CEB-3 ($80 here) because it was half price used and I liked the color. The setup for the Boss pedals works really well for this mod, but you could probably use most any guitar pedal out there.

I began by stripping out all the unnecessary parts including the circuit board, the input jack, 9 volt battery and cable, etc. The button in the pedal is already momentary so you can use the existing one. I soldered the existing wires coming off the button (that were clipped when removing the circuit board) to two other wires to extend their length. I then soldered the ends of the new wires to a 1/4" mono phone plug ($4 for two here). Then I mounted the phone plug in the hole where the input jack had been.

Update: I should have done more testing before making the post. I did the modification to add the LED about a week after finishing everything else. Prior to the LED part everything worked fine. Following the LED mod it works fine if the batteries are not installed, but if you put in batteries then the LED parts work but it won’t activate star power while playing. I’m sure I’m creating a short somewhere but since I’m learning as I go I haven’t figured out the problem yet. I’ll post another update once I have the LED part figured out.

I also wanted the LED in the pedal to light up when you pressed the pedal down. The one that comes with the pedal is mounted to a very small circuit board. In this used pedal the LED didn’t work which was for the best anyway since I had no clue as to what the maximum voltage on that LED was. So I instead took that LED out and just hot glued a new 3mm LED in place ($1.30 here). Make sure you know which lead is the cathode (negative) before you glue it down.

The max voltage on the new LED is 3V which is equivilant to 2 AAA batteries. So on the other end of the pedal I hot glued a battery holder in place. I chose to put it in the bottom instead of where the 9V battery used to be just because the bottom is easier to take off and replace than the pedal itself is.

To create a second circuit for the battery and LED that was closed by the same button, I first soldered the positive lead coming off the battery holder to the same lead on the button that was connecting to the positive lead on the phone jack. In the photo this is the red/white wire that is connecting to the button. I then connected another wire from the other lead on the button to the positive lead on the LED. After that I soldered the negative wire from the battery holder to the negative lead on the LED and installed the batteries.

I finished the pedal off by putting a piece of electrical tape over the hole on the end of the pedal where the AC adapter input used to be. I stuck a second smaller piece of electrical tape to it where the hole was just so the exposed part wouldn’t be sticky and collect dirt and what not.

I went with a mono audio cable to connect the pedal to the guitar. The one I used was from radio shack and around $7 but I can’t find it on their site for some reason to provide a link.

Below are some images of the Boss pedal after modifications are complete.

Conclusion

Overall this wasn’t a very tough mod, but since I was learning and had to do a lot of trial and error it did take a fair amount of time to complete. Hopefully this post will help you some if you decide to take on this project. If you have any questions just leave a comment and I’ll try to help you out.

Here are some pictures of the guitar with all the mods completed.

I’m not actually sure how new this is since I only found it last week, but since the world revolves around me I’m considering it new. Anyway, Microsoft has a full blown theme available on their Zune site which includes a visual style similar to the Royale Noir one that I covered in my last post (here). Due to the more matte-looking finish and smaller font I like it better than the Royale Noir one.

Note: The download of the full blown theme can be obtained here. It is in a nice and easy to install package but includes a dog-ass ugly background (which of course you can change). If you want to skip that you can find a ZIP file containing just the new visual style further down in this post.

Below is a comparison of the Start button between the two themes. Normal is just how the button looks the majority of the time as part of the Taskbar. Hover shows what it looks like if you hover your mouse cursor over it. Selected is what it looks like when you actually click on it to open the Start Menu.

I’ve never been a big fan of the color orange in general, but I think looks okay with the charcoal color that’s used throughout the rest of the Zune theme.

The next image is comparing what the Start Menu looks like under each visual style.

Side by I side I just think the Zune theme looks a little more crisp, whereas the Royale Noir theme looks a little washed out. I also like how the orange arrow button for All Programs stands out a little more than the green one does.

In this next image you can see how active and inactive title bars look between the two themes.

There isn’t as much of a difference between inactive and active window title bars on the Zune theme as there is on the Royale Noir one and that did take a little getting used to. This is also where you can really see the difference between the two fonts. I’ve shrunk down this image which results in both fonts appearing a bit squished, so it’s not completely accurate but you get the point. Overall, I just think the Zune font looks a little classier and is more readable. The downside with the font being smaller is that if you’re using some god awful high resolution then it might start getting a little tough to read. I’m running at 1920×1200 on one of my home machines and it is still plenty readable however.

This last image shows the difference between the Control Panel window in each theme. If you’re using the default folder setup in Windows XP, which shows the Common Tasks panel as seen on the left side of the window, then this will also affect things such as Windows Explorer.

Yet again I just think the Zune version looks a little crisper and like how the orange color makes the title bars in the Common Tasks panel stand out better.

Okay, so now that we are done comparing the two, here is how you can install just the Zune visual style without the background image and what not that comes in the official download.

First, you’ll need to download the ZIP file from here: Zune Download.

Once you have it downloaded, extract the Zune folder to the <Windows Install Directory>\Resources\Themes\ directory. Your Windows install directory is normally C:\Windows or C:\WINNT.

Now go to the directory you just extracted and double-click on the zune.msstyles file. This will open a Display Properties window where you will just need to click on the OK button.

Once it’s done applying you’re finished.

** Update ** If you tried downloading the ZIP file in this post prior to 11/12/06 and received an error stating that the ZIP file was corrupt, go ahead and try again. I’ve posted a new ZIP file that shouldn’t have that issue any longer.

By default in Windows XP you have three choices for themes: blue, silver and olive. Personally, I’ve always used olive but I never was a huge fan of any of the three. Now normally if you wanted things like the taskbar and window borders to be a different color you would have to use a third party application that "skins" the entire desktop. Unfortunately, any of those that I’ve ever tried just tend to eat up lots of memory while running and usually never produce the best of results anyway.

However, the other day I ran across a blog site (here) where they had discovered an official prototype theme called Royale Noir that was intended for Windows Media Center but was never implemented. It is very similar to the Longhorn palette, if not identical, which I personally fell in love with the first time I saw it. The best part is since it’s an official theme you don’t have to use any third party tool to use it.

Here’s a compilation screenshot to show what the taskbar, system tray and active/inactive window borders look like.

If you would like to use the theme you’ll need to start by downloading it here: Royale Noir Download.

Once you have it downloaded, extract the Royale Noir folder to the <Windows Install Directory>\Resources\Themes\ directory. Your Windows install directory is normally C:\Windows or C:\WINNT. You can see an example of the full path in the image above.

Now go to the directory you just extracted and double-click on the luna.msstyles file. This will open a Display Properties window where you will want to change the Color Scheme value to Royale Noir as shown in the image below.

Click on OK. It will start applying the new theme which can take a little time so don’t get impatient…it hasn’t locked up or anything like that. Once it’s done applying you’re finished.