v4rgas / picohero

Small project to interface a Wii Guitar Hero controller to a PC using a Raspberry Pi Pico

PicoGuitar

Small project to interface a Wii Guitar Hero controller to a PC using a Raspberry Pi Pico.

Hardware required

• Raspberry Pi Pico
• Classic controller or Nunchuck extension cable (will be cut!)
• Continuity tester (multimeter or an LED + battery)
• Soldering iron

Wiring

Only 4 wires need to be connected from the Pico to the guitar:

• 3.3V power
• Ground
• I2C Data (SDA)
• I2C Clock (SCL)

Cut the extension cable near the female connector end, leaving a good amount of cable to work with, then strip all the wires and use the continuity tester to map which pin on the connector goes to which wire. Having the wires mapped, solder/connect the wires to the Raspberry Pi Pico like this:

Female connector		Raspberry Pi Pico
Pin 1 (3.3V)	->	3.3V pin
Pin 2 (SCL)	->	GP5 pin
Pin 5 (SDA)	->	GP4 pin
Pin 6 (ground)	->	Any GND pin

image source - CC BY-SA 3.0

Comments

At the top of the sketch, you will find some constants for the whammy bar and for both axis of the analog stick. In my guitar these are the minimum and maximum values returned by WiiChuck, but I don't know if these are the same across all guitars, or if mine is just returning weird values. There is an example sketch included with the WiiChuck library which you can use to determine these values for yours.