Easy DIY Haptic Gaming Vest - for XBOX 360, XBOX ONE, PS3

First and foremost, I wanted a means of re-purposing a number of broken controllers that were populating various corners of my garage. The idea of a haptic vest, that’s not only easy to assemble, but within the budget of most consumers also intrigued me. As a High School English teacher and S.T.E.A.M. (Science Technology Engineering Arts Mathematics) educator, this is a great beginner project that all students will find rewarding, and you’ll have the added bonus of re-using and re-purposing tech., which would otherwise rot for 10, 000 years in a landfill on the outskirts of town.

MATERIALS:

1. One (fully-operational) XBOX ONE controller with rumble capabilities
2. Four rumble motors
3. Four-to-six 8 inch servo wires, and two “y” servo wire extenders/connectors
4. Long micro-USB wire to hard-line power the XBOX ONE controller
5. Either a few discarded canvas/mesh belts, or a $20 Home Depot Workman’s pair of suspenders (this will be your harness to hold the vibrating motors)
6. Soldering Iron, Solder, wire cutters, needle-nose pliers, and a small flathead screwdriver

Salvaging your rumble motors must be the first step in this process, in the best case scenario you will have six total motors to work with (two within your controller, and four others that will be mounted on your vest). The controllers pictured above are from the XBOX 360, and were easy to disassemble; these had “normal” phillps head screws to remove, where as the newer official XBOX ONE controllers require a special tool to remove the necessary screws. Always save your remaining controllers - each controller is a wealth of electronics to harvest! Caution: the wires that are attached to the rumble motors are rather thin and frail, strip these wires with care.

Boot up your CURA program, level your printer bed, get ready to wait for your necessary rumble motor mounts. I printed these on “low quality” (.28 mm) and it took my Creality Ender 3 four hours and thirty eight minutes to print five mounts. A special “Thank you” to Thingverse for hosting Jerware’s Xbox 360 Rumble Motor Mount - published on May 09, 2016. Designing something as specific as this would have eaten any tinkering time that I had available this week.

In this next phase you will have to remove the outter shell of your model 1697 XBOX ONE controller. There is a special, heavy plastic tool, that you should use (so as not to damage or scratch your controller), but I do not have such a tool. I chose to use a small, flathead screwdriver.

Along the controller’s edge is a fine seam that you can wedge your screwdriver into. Do not force the tool into the controller, but stay along the very edge of the seam where the bottom where your fingers would rest if you were holding the device. This shell will easily pop off once you release the attaching clips.

Now we’re inside your $60 controller. WARNING ONE: before you progress realize that you are butchering a rather expensive, and much needed, accessory for your gaming console. You could be ruining your controller.

A protective casing surrounds each rumble motor, if you have the proper screwdriver you can remove the inner protective shell without injuring your controller beyond repair. As you can see from the images that I posted above, it’s obvious that I used a rather sharp set of wire cutters to remove sections of plastic just above the rumble motors on each side of the controller.

WARNING TWO: If you take the barbarian route in this step then you also risk severing any and all of the wires beneath the platic shell.

Please note: you want to have the FEMALE servo wire end to come out of the controller so that you can attach the “y” servo wire thereafter.

We want the red and black wires that run from the circuit board to the rumble motors, there isn’t much room to work here, so again, be careful. Cut the wires, and then splice them back together, leaving the cut wire exposed to be spliced to one end of the 8 inch servo wire. This part is simple: black to black, and red to red. You can remove the third white wire on the servo wires now. Solder your spliced wires, and then slide your heat shrink over the new connection. Rinse-and-Repeat for the other side of the controller. As a young Tinkerer, I always chose black electrical tape for any and all projects, but trust me and spend the money: get yourself a large box of heat shrink - you can’t beat the insulation and security that these little tubes offer.

Your controller is now ready to accept the additional rumble motors!

Stripping and soldering wires doesn’t require a lengthy set of instructions, but I will suggest that you:

1. Cut the FEMALE end of the servo wire away, leave about an inch of wires attached for later use. If you’re on a budget you can make your own “Y” connectors using two of the discarded FEMALE connectors, and one MALE connector.
2. Strip wires with care, especially when dealing with your rumble motors. They have very limted wire to work with.
3. After stripping your wires, remember to slide your heat shrink tubes over the wires BEFORE you sodler your wires. Forgetting this step could mean re-stripping your wires and beginning again. Not insulating wires will absolutely cause a short and ruin your controller. I speak from experince, because I made this same mistake on the third rumble motor.

Test your newly modified controller by connecting it to a PC and running the “Game Controller Tester” app that’s FREE from the Microsoft APP Store. The attached shows the controller using this very program to test the rumble motors.

Vecna, the villain from Stranger Things Season 4, has offered up his services once again to be our model for this stage in the build. The harness offered above was purchased from the bargain bin at Home Depot for $15. It’s meant to hold up your Dad pants whilst working on your home. This harness is hearty, and probably too much for this project as it doesn’t really require this level of Dad-saggy-pants strength to hold four rumble motors weighing no more than one pound.

As a test I chose to use blue tape to temporarily mount the motors to the harness, a web belt, and later I attached large rectagular magnets to the backs of the printed mounts (to adhere to other magnets beneath my shirt and hold the motors to my chest).

I haven’t permenantly mounted the motors to any one of the above mentioned models as of yet because my son and I haven’t stop using the rumble vests long enough to start this final stage. This was a great novice level project to teach a Maker how to carefully dissasemble a familiar gaming accessory, strip wires, solder, use heat shrink, and wire up a simple circuit.