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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/21/2005
Posts: 529
Location: East Coast Baby
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I think tonight I'm going to start my Elmo guitar mod. I've decided that I'm just going to use the just the 4 buttons, so you can only play up to medium skill level, but that's ok, it's just for fun anyway.
I'm going to use a standard dual shock for the innards. the big elmo button behind the strum bar (more like barrell) will be the select(star power) button. I plan to swap the buttons around so that oscar and big bird are swapped, so the color order is correct.
I'm not even sure if it's going to be possible, I haven't even opened up a controller or the guitar yet but I've done some electronic mods in the past, hopefully I can pull it off.
I'll post some pictures along the way.
It's such a fine line between stupid, and clever. - David St. Hubbins:
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Rank: Roadie
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/27/2005
Posts: 15
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Please, do keep us posted on your elmo mod project.
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 10/16/2005
Posts: 264
Location: So Cal
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Sounds very neat. It looks possible. That strum "barrel" might need to change, though.
 
One of These Days - Pink Floyd cover
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 10/15/2005
Posts: 405
Location: Georgia
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This mod is more elmo without the L.
Great idea, post pictures when your done.
Userbars FTL
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/3/2005
Posts: 137
Location: VA
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Sounds awesome if you get it to work.
I think it should be fairly easy if your taking part out of the contoller and putting them in the Elmo guitar.
Sour Apple
GH1 status
easy 47/47 meduim 47/47 hard 46/47 expert 45/47
Damn Breaking Wheel, CfH and BAT
GH2 status
easy ?/64 meduim ?/64 hard ?/64 expert ?/64
not sure about my 5 stars on which songs/levels
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/21/2005
Posts: 529
Location: East Coast Baby
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I plan to start on it when I get home. the cool thing about the strum barrell is that it works just like the strum lever on the SG, it clicks both up and down, it doesn't spin like it looks like it does.
Hopefully it won't take too long, I'll do my best to post some pics tonite.
It's such a fine line between stupid, and clever. - David St. Hubbins:
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/27/2005
Posts: 429
Location: Illinois
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go for it man
 
MYSTERY
Easy-25/25
Medium-30/30
Hard- 15/30
Expert-1/30
ROCK ON!
''BASS PLAYERS FINGER BETTER''
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/10/2005
Posts: 539
Location: Chino, CA
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Hahaha, that sounds hilarious. When I first saw your sig I thought it was just a joke, but apparently not.
Best of luck to you.
I made a new drink this weekend... its Jager mixed with Jager. I call it 'The @#$@ Face' -Axel Steel
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Rank: Roadie
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/27/2005
Posts: 16
Location: texas
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lol smae thing for me!!!!but the wiggles!!
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Rank: Guitarist
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 10/17/2005
Posts: 48
Location: Backstreet Boys, Florida
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If you make it, I will buy it
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Rank: Roadie
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/27/2005
Posts: 16
Location: texas
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you will buy mine or the elmo one?
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/21/2005
Posts: 529
Location: East Coast Baby
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LOL
So, I've made some progress. I've taken pics but they are still on the camera. I'll post a nice documented build when I'm done though. So far I've been able to dismantle both the controller and the guitar. I've rewired the guitar's 4 button circuit board to the controller board and I've also faked out the controller to think it's the guitar so the strum button will work by shorting the left d-pad button. I hooked it up to the ps2 and tested it and all the buttons are working in game. I've wired up the Elmo button to select and it should work as well. I'm pretty sure that I can hook the left analog stick to the whammy bar, after that I need to get the strum bar working and put a start button on it and fit all the stuff inside. I hope to have it done tomorrow nite but I might not get back to it for a day or two.
We'll see I guess.
It's such a fine line between stupid, and clever. - David St. Hubbins:
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Rank: Guitarist
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/6/2005
Posts: 57
Location: SLO, CA
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Nextonex wrote:hopefully I can pull it off.
You absolutely can do this. I expect some awesome pics :)
I love the internet.
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/9/2005
Posts: 147
Location: Somewhere near Youngstown, OH
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I don't know whether to be more impressed in your skills as an electronics engineer or the fact that many of us (self included) think this is a good idea.
Either way, we all officially know the holiday gift which will, in most parent's eyes, well worth trampling the life out of another human being for.
just like the pied piper
led rats through the streets
we dance like marionettes
swinging to the symphony
of destruction
Ninja Pirate Mafia = ***** on Easy and Medium, now if only I could get that orange button figured out.
Trailer in a Tornado = Just like it sounds. A big mess that could have been easily avoided.
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/21/2005
Posts: 529
Location: East Coast Baby
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Quote:we all officially know the holiday gift which will, in most parent's eyes, well worth trampling the life out of another human being for.
As a parent, I'm glad I won't have to stand in line, LOL
My daycare called in sick so I'm home today. I've been working on it all morning, mostly the whammy bar, it's turning out to be the hardest part but I think I got it. I'll have a lot of info to put out for other people trying to make a guitar controller out of a dual shock. I should be able to wrap this up today so I expect to post the pictures tonite.
It's such a fine line between stupid, and clever. - David St. Hubbins:
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/21/2005
Posts: 529
Location: East Coast Baby
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Done! and to my suprise, it works!
I'll post the pictures and details later tonite.
It's such a fine line between stupid, and clever. - David St. Hubbins:
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/10/2005
Posts: 539
Location: Chino, CA
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Awesome, I can't wait.
I made a new drink this weekend... its Jager mixed with Jager. I call it 'The @#$@ Face' -Axel Steel
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/3/2005
Posts: 766
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Congrats that it works
#$%@ BUCKETHEAD
#$%@ FREEBIRD
METAL SUCKS
Rocking and Partying to the beats every night. http://www.freewebs.com/jseidita
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/21/2005
Posts: 529
Location: East Coast Baby
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So, the story.
I got Guitar Hero and my 2 year old daughter was hanging out with me so I dug thru her toy box and grabbed her guitar toy so she could play along. One nite after reading these boards and talking about modding a real guitar I ran across my daughters guitar and realized it had a strum button, whammy bar and 4 neck buttons, it was almost made to be a Guitar Hero controller.
Some things you need to know if you want to make a Guitar Hero Controller
First, you cannot use a PS2 controller. The ps2 controller is fully analog (except start and select). Unless your a electronics engineer I wouldn't try it. You need a Playstation or PSone dual shock, I used a Playstation dual shock because it was all I had. I hear that the PSone controllers are slightly different, so you might want to take that into consideration.
Second. The GH SG is different from a standard controller in one way, The left D-Pad is stuck on. You can't make a guitar controller using the controller config because when you use a controller to play you don't have to strum. So here's the catch. once you rig your controller to be a guitar all the buttons change. Here's the list of controls when using a guitar.
R2=GREEN
CIRCLE=RED
TRIANGLE=YELLOW
X=BLUE
SQUARE=ORANGE
SELECT=STAR POWER
START=START/PAUSE
UP/DOWN on D-PAD=STRUM
LEFT ANALOG UP = WHAMMY
Now, On to the Modding. Here's what you'll need.
A Playstation Controller
A Moddable Thingy, in this case, an Elmo Guitar
A Soldering Iron/Solder
A Voltmeter/Continuity Tester
Some Bits of Wire
Beer
Here's what I started with
Here's the innards of the guitar. Most of this gets trashed. I'll be keeping the strum bar, whammy assembly, elmo button and the button circuit board
Here's a close up of the strum switch
Here's the front side of the button bar.
Here's the controller ripped apart along with the circuit board from the button bar. We'll be connecting these two together ;)
See. Told ya so.
Here's the dual shock board and the analog daughter board. We'll need to disconnect that and cut it in little peices later. that will let us hook it up to the whammy
Here's the analog sticks, cut up into nice bite sized pieces.
Mr. Dremmel and I made some room for the analog nub.
Here's the analog stick in it's new home on sesame street.
This is the whammy bar arm. it used to just push a switch that played a whammy sound, now it has to move the analog stick so I needed to add some plastic to it. I superglued these together. I hope it holds up.
Here's the new part in place. it's hard to see how it all goes together but it was the best I could come up with. I must have worked on the whammy bar for a good 4 hours trying to figure out how to make it work.
Here's the left directional shorted out. This is what makes it appear as a guitar controller to the game. Another thing of note, you'll notice that there is a black coating on all the controller contact points. you'll need to scrape some of this off before you can solder to it. make sure to scrape down past the silver to the shiny copper. you can see where I scraped the down contact.
Here's all the stuff wired together. lemme tell ya, you think playing with the guitar is hard, I had to test this several times..I used Iron Man on easy for all my testing because it has the whammy on the 1st note.
Here's the strum bar installed. It's bi directional, meaning you can strum up and down but there is only one switch so I could only wire it up as the down D-Pad. This doesn't seem to be a big issue because in the game you can keep hitting down to get back to the top of the menu's and in the songs it doesn't matter at all as far as I can tell.
Here's the guitar with all the new guts crammed in. I was able to actually find some screw holes that lined up with the dual shock circuit board. I had to be carefull not to let the wires interfere with the strum switch and other screw holes.
Here's another picture of the guts. Not quite a neat as I like, but you'll never see it so as long as it works, I'm happy.
Here's the daddy guitar and the baby guitar. notice the distance between the 4 buttons on the elmo guitar and the distance between the green and blue buttons on the GH SG. you really gotta reach for that cookie monster button!
Elmo Rocks!!! I added a little green button for START and Elmo is the SELECT(Star Power) button. The volume knob was going to be start, but I wasn't able to work it out.
The controller works well. the buttons are spaced totally different than the standard guitar so that takes some getting uses to. other than that, it works pretty well. having only 4 buttons you can really only play easy and meduim songs but it's still fun. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being a standard controller and 10 being the SG I'd rate it a 7.
I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone has regarding this project.
ROCK ON!
I want to add the nuts for a strap in the future.
It's such a fine line between stupid, and clever. - David St. Hubbins:
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Rank: Guitar God
Groups: Guitar Hero
Joined: 11/3/2005
Posts: 766
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So now you and your daughter can play songs on easy together make a video of that.
I give it a 10/10
Amazing modding keep doing it
#$%@ BUCKETHEAD
#$%@ FREEBIRD
METAL SUCKS
Rocking and Partying to the beats every night. http://www.freewebs.com/jseidita
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