Modding Your NES Controller

Got a couple of NES controllers lying around your house (I know I have 4-5 in my house) and you just don’t know what to do with them? Well if you still want to get some use out of them you can always tweak them a bit and put some LEDs in them.

Putting in LEDS is pretty simple, all you’ll need are the following:

• A drill
• 2 LEDs (more if you want to try and mod each input)
• 2 100ohm resistors (more if you want to try and mod each input)
• A small length of wire
• Soldering skills.

Now all this stuff is pretty easy to come by (just go to radioshack). If you want to give it a try just read on for the instructions.

This is really interesting and very easy. Check out these simple how-to:

1. First of all, solder a 100ohm resistor to the positive end of the LED. Then solder some wire to the LED and the resistor, preferably black to the LED (negative) red to the resistor (positive).

Got a couple of NES controllers lying around your house (I know I have 4-5 in my house) and you just don’t know what to do with them? Well if you still want to get some use out of them you can always tweak them a bit and put some LEDs in them.

Putting in LEDS is pretty simple, all you’ll need are the following:

• A drill
• 2 LEDs (more if you want to try and mod each input)
• 2 100ohm resistors (more if you want to try and mod each input)
• A small length of wire
• Soldering skills.

Now all this stuff is pretty easy to come by (just go to radioshack). If you want to give it a try just read on for the instructions.

This is really interesting and very easy. Check out these simple how-to:

1. First of all, solder a 100ohm resistor to the positive end of the LED. Then solder some wire to the LED and the resistor, preferably black to the LED (negative) red to the resistor (positive).

2. Use some hot shrink tube to cover the exposed wire (I used red and black electrical tape because I only had black hot shrink tubing on hand.)

3. Repeat the previous steps for each button you want to hook a LED to.
4. Drill holes in your controller the same size as your LEDs (you may want to take a exato knife and cut off the excess plastic the forms around the drill hole.
5. Place the LED in the holes.

6. Solder all the positive wire (reds) to the white wire on the other side of the circuit board and tuck them in so you can close the controller.

7.Solder the negative (if you used the same colors as I did then we’re talking about the black one here) to the correct pin.

It’s pretty simple and you shouldn’t have any problems as long as you did some soldering before (although I did do it on a friend’s controller first because I haven’t used the iron in a while).

A word of caution: As with most mods (and experiments), there’s bound to be some slip-ups, so I suggest you think twice about boring holes into your precious NES controller‘s case.