Converting an Xbox 360 wireless controller to wired?

Hi guys, so sorry if this topic has been brought up before, but I was wondering if anyone has actually done it or something similar to this.

Whilst doing so I came across this which was started by a guy name 'Mike Bee':

http://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/155459/converting-a-wireless-360-controller-to-wired

While that place was apparently an incorrect to ask, they did get some results or that it was implied and it never really continued. I signed up and tried replying but you need a certain amount of "reps" to do so thus I kinda wasted my time joining

But has anyone came across doing this? Or that if that will actually work perhaps??

 

It doesn't work - the play and charge cable does implement a USB device, but all it does is negotiate for a 500mA power supply so it can charge the battery (if you don't do this, the maximum power the USB spec allows you to draw is 100mA). It doesn't enumerate as anything that's useful for getting the button presses out of the controller.

You can use the RF board off a broken 360 and plug that into a PC - it works exactly the same as MS's wireless controller receiver except with different USB ID codes. Oh, and you will need a 3.3V regulator since the RF board uses 3.3V and directly connecting it to the 5V Vbus from the USB will damage it. You also need to pair the controller while the board is still connected to the 360, since the pairing button is on the main board.

 

You can also get one of these..

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/New-...60-Wireless-Controller-Retail/2015742494.html

Never used one myself, every time I remember to buy one I has no $10 spare :/

 

Guys guys common, this is a modding sub-forum here, we dont have to be limited by the Play and Charge Kit

The guy, Mike Bee, was (later implied) referring to using your own USB cable and connecting the necessary points inorder to carry the data signal and not only the power.

Now with that being said, is it possible by any chance??

 

No, he was talking about using a soldered on cable for power - which is something that does work. If you want to try and get the data out of the controller using that cable then it won't - simply because the device doesn't expose any HID descriptors. That's why I suggested getting the RF board out of a 360.

 

Well, have you had a look at the other answer in that topic? Another user made some interesting points where he also posted a pic (from acidmods) where another user pointed out the Voltage and Ground pins, and possibly a couple of comms points too?

If we were to wire all this through a normal USB cable (of course through the right wire-outs), would data then be carried over?

 

OK, those points are the same ones that go to the D+/D- pins on the play and charge cable, so soldering a cable to them is electrically identical to just plugging in the play and charge cable and using that. And it doesn't work as a wired controller cable - I should also explain that I went through pretty much the same process myself, since I simply couldn't believe that MS would have implemented a full USB controller on the device and then set it up so you can't actually use it for anything useful, but they did.

Luckily, there are lots of RROD 360s out there that you can take the RF board from - and the USB port on that does speak standard HID protocol.

 

So are you saying there is absolutely no way to get this wired?

I am in no way interested in doing it using an RF board, but surely there has to be a way to get the internal drivers of the wireless controller to be detected through a standard USB cable?? What makes this wireless controller any different than the standard wired one (except the fact that they are wireless and wired of course), what is stopping it from acting like a wired one???

What have you done precisely perhaps?

 

Literally the only idea I can think of is creating some kind of hardwired linkage between the RF transmitter in the controller and a receiver salvaged from a defunct 360 or RF usb dongle. But it's more effort than it's worth, really. You'd be better off just purchasing a wired X360 controller.

 

They are different. The USB version has a USB controller fitted (Translates the data from the controller to USB)
The wireless controller doesn't have that, it goes from the controller to a RF transceiver.

As far as USB HID is concerned, the Wireless controller just doesn't have it. This is a very simplified explanation.

At best all the Data pins do on the charge cable do is merely send pairing information for the RF..


There was also the option of buying a sub $10 RF usb adapter (I popped a link up) instead.. Zero soldering

 

I started off by looking at the descriptors it outputs - which are very simple. There are only 3 - one device descriptor, one power descriptor and one interface descriptor.

The device class is specified as "Vendor defined", and the single interface descriptor also has the class and protocol set to 0xff (vendor). It also specifies that the device suports no endpoints (except the default EP0 used for control messages, of course) - just in case it was lying, I tried initiating communications (both read and write) with each of the possible endpoints, and in each case it generated a NAK as soon as it saw the address.

Admittedly, it's possible that if you write some magic runes to the control endpoint then something might happen - but I am extremely dubious about this, since that would make it the only USB device I have ever seen from Microsoft that didn't accurately report it's capabilities in the descriptors. It seems much more likely that the descriptors are perfectly accurate, and this is really a device that does nothing except identify.

Note that the wired controller, the official receiver and the hacked up 360 RF board DO all produce accurate sets of descriptors.

 

Hi guys, thanks very much for all that information, I felt like I've been educated well here! hahaha

So it seems that a certain chip in the wired controller is not present in the wireless controller? Thus this is what's causing so it not to be directly detected?

 

They have different main chips - it's difficult to tell exactly what they are because they have Microsoft markings on them, but the one in the wireless controller has a lot more pins than the one in the wired controller.

The reason it's not identified as a controller is simply that it doesn't advertise any controller related functionality - as I mentioned earlier, the P&C kit advertises 1 interface and no endpoints. The wired controller advertises quite a bit more:

4 Interfaces

Interface 0: 2 Endpoints (0x01, 0x81)
37 HID descriptors
Interface 1: 4 Endpoints (0x02, 0x82, 0x03, 0x83)
1 HID descriptor
Interface 2: 1 Endpoint (0x84)
34 HID descriptors
Interface 3: 0 Endpoints
Contains string "Xbox Security Method 3, Version 1.00, © 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved."

So this actually looks like a device that does something - which the P&C cable doesn't.

The wired controller also has a security chip, which doesn't appear to be present in the wireless controller (at least, not in the same form) - but since it doesn't have that "Xbox Security Method" string, this is basically irrelevant, since the console never even tries to talk to it anyway. I am still surprised that they didn't put the code to allow it to be used as a wired remote control on the PC, but that's the way it seems to be.

 

So how can we get all the interfaces or endpoints to be directly transferred over a USB cable (and I am not referring to the Play and Charge cable)? I am thinking of soldering a different USB cable directly onto the board to their respective solder points (like 5v, GND etc.)

Is it also quite possible that the USB receiver contains the USB controller chip that makes the wireless controller identified??

I am just trying to really understand how this is working.

 

It's pretty simple really - the controller contains a pre-programmed CPU chip that reads the state of the buttons and sticks and then feeds them to the radio module using a protocol that's similar to Bluetooth, but not compatible. The only other devices in the controller are a serial EEPROM that's wired to both the MCU and the radio chip (it looks like it just contains the hardware address of the radio and pairing codes) and the security chip (which is the same one that's in the wireless controller). The same CPU also has a USB port (wired to the P&C cable connections) and a serial port (which goes to the connector on the front and seems to only be used by the chatpad).

So if you are looking for some hidden USB interface inside the controller, I don't think it's there - maybe there is something similar buried in the radio stack (for example, Bluetooth uses USB HID descriptors - but this isn't Bluetooth, although it uses a similar radio), but since it seems like you are looking for pins you can solder to the D+/D- wires in a USB cable and have it just work, I'm pretty sure you are going to be disappointed.

 

This is what I was kinda after, or anything of the like where we could tap some point on the PCB board and wire it out directly so that we are not (only) using the wireless function but all those functions that are transmitted wirelessly are fed through physically through a standard USB cable (not P&C cable).

I know this may sound abit noobish but there has been Youtube videos of people grabbing their cables and attaching it to the + and - on the battery pack and using the controller through that. I just saw that as a potential if things were done correctly or with know "know-how" in mind.

Maybe anyone else can probably shine some more light on the possibility to this?

 

Listen to Trimesh (guy is an engineer) he knows what he's talking about more than someone making some Youtube video of hooking up a USB wire to the battery contacts and only achieving that the controller turns on since it's being fed 5v.

 

Oh I wasn't trying to dispute him, I'm just saying that someone just managed to do such a thing and I'm implying that more could potentially be done by someone who knows what they're doing

 

I actually had a look at one of my wireless controllers are the back, whilst the big chip was labelled Microsoft below it was written:
- x810462-003
- el820164m32
- M9653c13

Now whilst there is no direct information about them, the only source I could find was Alibaba advertising them for sale on their website, many ads infact, and I only looked at a few inwhich one of them described (x810462-003) as " Interface,RF & Wireless,Timing and so on".

Could be a nice clue to what it is if no-one knew what it was

 

It's a part custom made for MS - just a higher integration version of the 3-chip set in the original controller:

MCU + Radio baseband controller (NS SC14470C)
2.4GHz Radio + baseband interface (NS LMX4270C)
Serial config EEPROM (Atmel 24C04N)

The other chip (marked XBOX 803120) is the security chip I was talking about (It's an Infineon SLE66 with custom MS keys in it - basically a smartcard in a SO package).