Idea

Today I decided to do something fun, I went to my local flea market for inspiration and found it! It came in the form of a dead but in good-condition NES controller. After closer inspection, the problem was a dead 4021 p2s IC.

I was about to convert it to a TV controller when I remembered it was MakeyMakey Monday!

Resurrection

I started by cleaning the device and figuring out how I was gonna go about wiring the buttons to the MakeyMakey. I then got a few of my Adafruit Extra-long break-away headers and an old red pen (I needed the ink, you will see why in a moment).

I inked the top of the headers with the red pen’s ink and then placed the NES Controller back on-top of the headers; This gave me a clear idea of there I should drill.

I got my trusty hand drill and fitted the headers to the back of the NES Controller. Afterwards, I testing the header locations to make sure the MakeyMakey fit correctly. It did!

My attention them moved over to the PCB, I cut the wires for the controller cable and desoldered the whole thing, IC and all.

I then soldered a few wires from the headers to the controller PCB.

And finally cut the pull-up resistor traces; this step is extremely important! Failing to cut them will result in all buttons getting triggered.

I then cleaned up and closed the controller making sure I didn’t bend any of the internal wires.

Tested it by playing some minecraft.

Mapping

Up Arrow = W
Left Arrow = A
Down Arrow = S
Right Arrow = D

Select = F
Start = G

B = RIGHT CLICK
A = LEFT CLICK

Video