NES Controller Mod

About 16 months ago, a friend approached me, asking if I’d modify a second NES controller to more closely resemble that worn as a belt buckle by Captain N: The Game Master. The first attempt (now called Mark I), while mildly successful, left something to be desired:

Weaknesses included:

  • The battery did not fit inside the controller, and had to be hidden elsewhere (behind the belt, generally)
  • The battery connection was flakey
  • The LEDs, while bright enough, looked rather silly just poking out the front of the controller
  • There was no on/off switch, and the only power savings came from unplugging the battery or letting the LEDs auto-dim (which reduced, but didn’t eliminate, power consumption)

To address these issues, Mark II was “commissioned”. During the next year or so, I learned a lot while trying new (to me) techniques to do a much cleaner build than the first one. I’m quite happy with the results, of which I didn’t get a good, finished picture. This one at least gives an idea of what the light bar looks like (though it’s blurry and lacks buttons):

NES_Controller_Front

While in Mark I, I used an Arduino Pro Mini and carved out enough of the original circuit board to make it fit, this time I created my own circuit board utilizing an ATMega ATtiny4313 chip for the brains. This alone caused some consternation, as the Arduino Development Environment doesn’t natively support it. I used the toner transfer method to mask my board for etching, a process I don’t wish to repeat (I plan on using a laser to remove masking material where I need to etch next time).

Programming was fairly easy, of course. I copied the code from Mark I, and made a few tweaks to add a couple lighting effects.

I did manage to include a battery inside the controller this time! The capacity was halved, but the power consumption was reduced, as well. I  included a micro-USB charging circuit and a power switch, too. The smaller battery should easily get through any normal use at ComiCon (it did just fine there this year).

With this being my first scratch-designed circuit board, I made a couple of silly errors, but was able to green wire my way out of them (lost a ground trace, for instance). I also had what I thought was a hardware problem, but turned out to be a simple software issue that 10 lines of code could fix (forgot to pull up my input pins using the internal resistors of the microcontroller).

All in all, I think Mark II came out nicely, and I sure learned a lot from building it!

NES_Board_Soldered

Incidentally, one resource I’ve found to be indispensable is Sparkfun Electronics. Their support is outstanding, and their forums quite informative. If you’re looking to try some tinkering at home, I highly recommend that you check them out.

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