Friday, October 14, 2011

Electronic Repairs

One of the Xbox controllers broke.  The back lip that holds the battery pack broke off and the controller would no longer hold a battery.  The cool thing about having things break is you get to buy a new one, and there have been several special addition controllers released since the Xbox has come out.  I started my search online; deciding to check and see how hard it is to replace the back cover.  The Internet is a great resource and within about 30 seconds I learned that I could probably fix it myself and still have a controller that was as cool or cooler than any special addition.

After searching I decided to go with a setup from Amazon.

there were other kits and mods available but I really don't want a rapid fire mod or anything like that so I kept it simple


the beginning
YouTube is a great source for how to videos if you ever have a question about whether you can fix something or not. The scariest part of the repair was soldering 3 wires to the controller circuit board but as you can see below I managed.

 

All Apart





All done
The lights are pretty bright and will reduce the battery life by about 20% but they can be turned on and off.  I could have got something without lights and the soldering.  It would have been an easier repair but if you have to fix something you might as well make it cool.