How to program a guitar hero guitar

Then completely take off the strings on the guitar. On the back of the guitar, you'll see where the balls on the strings rest. We'll be putting the wide plastic inserts in those holes so they keep the little ball part of the string from touching the metal. Now slide one of the wide, short inserts onto each string so that the flange side touches the ball.

Thread the string back through the guitar, but not through the little moveable metal part on the front of the guitar the saddle. Make sure that the flange seats at the top of the hole properly. Now it's time to insulate the place where the strings touch the bridge on the front of the guitar. If any of the strings got pushed through the saddle, take them out of the saddle.

With each string, thread one of the thin, long inserts down each string so that the flange part is further away from the guitar. This first set of inserts will go into the hole directly on the face of the guitar.

It helps to rotate the saddles 90 degrees so you can access underneath them easier. It might take a bit of jiggling around, since the faceplate on the bridge might not be perfectly lined up with the holes the strings are coming through, but get the first set of the inserts flush with the faceplate of the bridge. Next, thread the strings through the saddles. Add another thin insert to each string; this insert will rest between the saddle and the string so that the string doesn't touch that part of the bridge.

For the sake of the next step, leave the strings loose; we'll need to access the fretboard. Next, we need to add wires to the fretboard. For this, we'll actually be laying copper tape over each of the frets and running that up the neck, so that the actual circuitry can be clipped onto the head of the guitar somewhere.

First, measure and cut out 5 long L-shaped pieces of copper tape. They should ideally be just as thick as needed to completely cover each fret, and the other leg should be long enough to reach from the fret to the head of the guitar.

Now take one of the 'L's and peel off the tape's backing and carefully apply it to the first fret, wrapping it around the guitar so the other end of the L runs along the neck of the guitar about 1 cm away from the fretboard. Make sure there is at least 0. Next, attach the other 4 'L's to the next 4 frets, being careful to leave an even amount of space between them.

You'll want to put them fairly wide apart, since when you prepare the box to clip onto it, you'll want that extra room. Now comes the hard part - circuit assembly. Circuit board plans and electrical schematics can be found here- code. Populate the board according to the schematic. All resistors are 10K ohm, except the 2 68 Ohm resistors that are marked on the silkscreen.

Where the image of the board says Connectors, you can either solder straight pins there, or just solder long pieces of wire. Where the board says 'Strings', solder 6 long wires in - these wires will go outside of the enclosure and attach to the strings at the tuning pegs, so make sure they're long enough. You'll attach the two buttons via small wires, since these buttons will be attached to the case. Finally, you'll need to attach one really long wire to the pick pin, that wire will go to the guitar pick, so it needs to be long enough to comfortably reach the bridge of the guitar.

As far as the code goes, you'll need some way to get the code onto the microcontroller - Atmel makes a wide variety of programmers, as does Adafruit industries. I recommend both, since their products are compatible with Atmel's AVR Studio software, which makes programming things a snap.

The code was also written in AVR Studio, so it is most easily viewed and organized that way. Now you'll need to put that circuitry somewhere.

In whatever enclosure you choose, though, it will need to fit flush on the back of your guitar where those copper traces went. In order for the circuit to contact the tape on the guitar's neck, we're going to add copper tape contacts to the outside of the box that will line up with the tracks on the guitar. This part is hard to describe, but look at the picture and it will make sense First, you need to position the enclosure on the neck and mark where would be a good spot for those contacts.

Then, cut 5 strips of copper tape wide enough to serve as reliable contacts and long enough to reach around the edges of the box and reach inside. Finally, cut a thin piece of foam that is wide enough to cross all 5 contacts. These strips are going to be laid parallel to each other along the outside of the box and over the foam so that when the box is pressed to the guitar head, the foam presses the tape against the traces on the neck.

The easiest way I know is to open an spreadsheet, get a wire, and start shorting connections on the breakout board until you get some useful key combos. If you look at the plastic contact sheets from the keypad, you can see it consists of two contacting layers. When testing for connections you should keep one side of your testing wire on a contact from one layer, while probing contacts from the other layer of contact sheet. On mine pins were on one sheet, while pins were on the other.

This made my method of testing something like the following: 1. If you're lucky enough to get the same keypad I used, you're work here is already done, and you can use the chart below to help in the next step. Armed with a listing of which shorts same as key presses will result in what keys, we can now hook up the actual buttons in the guitar. I started by globbing on some extra solder to each pin of the breakout board.

Next I took a paid of wires for a switch, chose a pair of contacts that would result in a key press on the keypad controller, and soldered the wires for the button to the pins for a key press. You want to try and steer clear of non-alphanumeric keys as much as you can things like alt, shift, and insert. Symbol keys should be alright. I'd definitely test each key after hooking it up to make sure you don't get all of them attached and have none of them work.

Attach all your other buttons on the guitar to the breakout board, test it, and you should be getting characters typed when you press the buttons on your guitar. Now all that's left is to clean up the wires, glue down everything, and put the back on the guitar again. Next step is to hook up the guitar and obtain the actual game you'll be using it with.

Frets on Fire. Now that we have a working guitar with which to play, you need the game to play it with. Download Frets on Fire from here. Once you get into the game, go into the settings menu, then the keys menu, and set each key on your guitar controller for it's appropriate button. You may also need to adjust audio and video settings.

Information on these things can be found here or here. Once you're jamming with your new guitar, you'll notice that by default there are only 3 built-in tracks. These will only get you so far, and you'll be wanting more songs you know in short order. Luckily the makers of the FoF software have accommodated for this and added the ability to edit your own FoF tracks, as well as import them from Guitar Hero and Guitar Hero 2, should you happen to have them lying around.

You can also download tracks from sites like Keyboards on Fire. You can also add custom labels to your homebrewed tracks. These are generally found on FoF fan sites and forums. You can also create your own, though it may require knowledge of vector graphics editing, and software such as InkScape. Feel free to mess with the stock theme though and try your hand at homebrewing mods. That about wraps it up. You've made a cool guitar, gotten your software straight, and have a bajillion songs in a hello kitty modded rock-fest.

All that's left is to get in there and rock! Reply 14 years ago on Introduction. Reply 11 years ago on Introduction. Reply 13 years ago on Introduction. All i did was get a ps2 controller to USB for 12 bucks at Radioshack, then you download Joy2Keys for free which makes it so you can correspond buttons on your controller to keys on your keyboard Reply 12 years ago on Introduction.

There are easier ways to do it for sure, and this isn't the best way if you already have a GH controller for sure, but I was just looking for a cheap means of practicing the game and seeing if i liked it enough to invest 70 dollars in it. If you prefer the way you have it more power to ya. Besides, i get to explain to people that I made my own GH controller, that's a pretty fun thing to see people's faces from.

If i was making my own fret buttons, could i use piezo's as triggers for the frets and make a button to go over it, or would that not work? Xbox I found out about this wireless receiver thing for the PC, u can connect any wireless X box controls.

But I don't really have the time to go out and buy 1. By carpespasm Follow. More by the author:.