Changing the Color of your LEDs on Wiimote/Wii

Method of Rhythm

I Got Mad Hax!
Dec 18, 2006
228
1
Long Island, NY
Equipment needed:
1. LED (Light Emiting Diodes) Available Here (You must not get a tri-color LED or a RG/RBG LED, for the sake of making this easier)
2. Fine-tipped Soldering Iron (Clean tip will help this process greatly.
3. Flux
6. Wire Cutters
4. Tweezers
5. Masking Tape

*I do not hold myself responsible for any damage that may be inflicted upon your Wiimote nor the voiding of Nintendo's warantee during this modification.*

This mod can not only be done for not only your WiiMote but also for the actual console itself. It is just a matter or remembering "What goes where."

If you need help at any point of the assembling process go here or PM me.

Okay so here we go. You have your LED, red, white, or green whatever (note: this mod will not work for color-changing LEDs). Plug in your Soldering Iron while you are about to disessemble your Wiimote so it gets nice and hot. Once you get the Wiimote into its halves locate and then, gently pry out the board that contains the LED. *This part is very important* Look at your diode and look inside the bulb. It should look exactly like this:

Fig%201.bmp


Inside the bulb there is a straight piece, and a bent piece, Fig. 1 (above) displays this. Take note to which wire the "straight" wire goes to and which the "bent" wire goes to. This is very important to note because if the polarity of the wires is swapped, the LED will not light up. I suggest actually taking out a piece of paper and drawing a very crude example just to be absolutely sure because, this is 10x harder to fix than to just do it right the first time.

Now take your wire cutters and cut of the diode off leaving as much wire as you can after you are absolutely certain which wire goes where. You should now have a section of board looking like this:

Fig%202.bmp

The green being the board (of the WiiMote or console) and the lines being the wire that you left behind.
(Poor graphic I know, I will get actual images of the process up)

Now here comes the hard part!

Tape down the circuit board with the Masking Tape
to create a sturdy and surface for you to work with. Now take your 2-prong diode (a friend at this point may help actually, necessary since nobody doing this mod is a pro solderer) and with your friend using the Tweezers, hold the two prongs against the wires you left remaining, exactly like the original blue ones were on the board. If the original LED prongs were bent in a certain direction do not worry about this, you will bend them gently into place after you are finishd. Make sure that the two prongs are not touching any other wires and to bend any wires out of the way for the time being.

*You may want to wear saftey glasses at this point*

Now applying your Soldering Iron and Flux. Now when soldering, too little flux and connectivity is poor and too much flux is just sloppy and can cause a whole sleu of problems. So just use a moderate amount and don't let any drip to any undesirable areas. To solder correctly you hold the iron to the part you are soldering FIRST then you bring the flex TO the iron and pull the flux away when you are done applying the correct amount. Allow to cool.

This is the time you bend the LED prongs into the correct direction if need be with the tweezers. Be careful not to rip off the LED!

Reassemble your WiiMote/Wii.
(if you need help with this WiiMote (2nd Link)/Wii (2nd link) click the links.)

All done.

PM me if any more details are required.
 
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Very very cool, but gosh that's a lot of work just to change the LED color! Yikes! Awesome though! Nice work!
 
As I mentioned before though in another thread, you're showing through-hole LEDs. The Wii remote has surface mount LEDs.

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/present.php?p=Wii-Internals

You can see them as D5, D6, D7, and D8 in the link above in one of the pictures. This shows step-by-step how to take the Wii remote apart.

You need surface mount LEDs to replace them. Through-hole LEDs are simply too large.

You MAY be able to pull it off with the really small through-hole LEDs.
 
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Yeah, it's cool, saw a site about this, but voiding the Wii's warantee is enough to stop me from doing this.
 
You won't void the Wii's warranty by opening the Wii remote, just the warranty on the Wii remote!
 
SuperH said:
You won't void the Wii's warranty by opening the Wii remote, just the warranty on the Wii remote!

I meant when changing the LED for the console. Besides, like you said, the Wiimote has a warranty too which is why people are sending theres to Nintendo to fix the crackling sound problem in some of the speakers. If they see any evidence of tampering, they might not accept it.
 
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it
s just a wiimote though...can always buy a new one :\

BTW thanks for the tutorial! Just one question though...i can't obtain a new LED light cause my mom would kill me if she saw i was taking apart my stuff, so i figured i could take the LED light out of a old gamecube wireless controller thats broke...the wires on the bottom arn't very big but i was wondering if i could use that?
 
By the way you don't need flux to solder. Just buy solder with a rosin core. Its much easier and less messy :thumbsup:. You can also get LEDs at LSdiodes.com.

Surface mount LEDS are probably the most annoying things to solder (well anything that is surface mount is)

In all a very good tutorial.
 
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