Controller Port LED Mod - Changing Colors

[GoTeamScotch]

Wanted to share this simple mod I did last night. I'm sure it's been done but I personally haven't seen it done.



What it is is a variation of the controller port LED mod, which is where you install LEDs into each of the four front controller ports. The guides I've seen tell you to use a 5v LED and use the power available in the controller port to power it. What I did instead was use 3mm bi-color LEDs and power them using the same power source as the front power/eject button. This makes it so you can change the color of the LEDs by changing the color of the power/eject color from within XBMC (and other apps). I know these power lines weren't designed to handle 3x the load but I have spare motherboards lying around in case it broke something and I just wanted to see if it would work. I've done controller port LEDs before but I didn't like how when you change the color of the power light, your controller port colors then didn't match. This mod makes it so they're always all the same and you can pick which color they all are.

I had the option of pulling power from the wires going from the power/eject board to the motherboard but I didn't want to have to fish them through the front if I pulled the faceplate off. Also, when the faceplate is attached, there's very little clearance between the power/eject board and the xbox's metal cage and I didn't want to have any short circuits. I elected to pull power from the underside of the motherboard on the underside of the power/eject header.

After snapping this photo, I put some hot glue on this area to keep the wires in place and to prevent shorts.
(sorry for blurry photo! It looked clear when I took it on my phone)

I used the ground available in the controller ports which let me run just 4 wires instead of 6. You can see the blue+purple wires going along the front here:


LEDs wired up to ground in each port:


LEDs glued in, ready for power to be connected:


That's about it. Pretty straightforward and easy mod for the mod part. Came out looking great. I was half-expected all of the LEDs to be dimmer but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Next I'm putting a wireless router in this Xbox that's running DD-wrt in wireless bridge mode. I'll probably post about that later once it's all the way done.

[Wally12]

Very cool, thanks for the tutorial! I want to start doing some simple LED mods at some point so I'm bookmarking this for future reference. Do you think it would be possible to install things like these so you could change colors very easily with a remote?

Link 1 Lights

Link 2 Lights

Link 3 Lights

[GoTeamScotch]

Well sure, so long as they take 12v or less and doesn't draw too much power from the Xbox then it should work fine. If the color-changing aspect of it uses an iR sensor then you'd need to mount the receiver somewhere on the front where the remote can find it. Other than that it should work fine as long as you've got solid connections.

[GoTeamScotch]

A few more photos

This box is on eBay just fyi: http://www.ebay.com/itm/152577911711









And semi-transparent Halo boxes look even better!






The red LED on the center-right was a little dim. I later opened it back up and replaced the p/e board and it's equally as bright now.


Going to do the one on the right once I get a chance.

[Nextelhalo]

Those look really good, good thinking on the matching color mod.