Wednesday 1 February 2012

XBox 360 Controller PCB

I have never owned on XBox 360. I had the first XBox and there were plenty of games on the 360 that I was interested in such as the Halo, Fable and Forza series but for whatever reason I never ended up purchasing an XBox 360. That's not to say I haven't spent my time playing on them though and I'm very familiar with the 360 controller.

I've never seen any of its insides though so don't know what circuit boards and parts are in there...until now.
Whilst browsing the web I came across this picture of the PCB that's inside the X Box 360 controller. I have an interest in printed circuit boards and am starting to think about making my own for home made electronic projects, so it's always interesting to see the ones that are actually used by large manufacturers.


The first thing that I noticed on this board was the two white circles which highlight the positions of the two control sticks which are featured on the controller. The four markers to the left of the centre are the markings for the directional pad input, with each compass point of the D-pad marked on the PCB. The black markers show the positions of the rest of the input buttons; the A, B, X, Y, back, start and controller number. If you look closely you can see all of these are marked SW1 - SW15. The final thing of not is the holes around the edge which allow the screws to hold the circuit board in place within the controller casings.

Interesting yes? I'll hopefully be able to find  PCB diagrams of other console controllers for future posts.

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