DualCaster

This project was started from my love of Guitar Hero and Clone Hero. I was horrible at GH Live, however the new playstyle was innovative. I wanted to try it out again, while not having to make or buy an entirely new guitar. I LOVE the MiniCaster and its my daily use guitar. This is what came out. A longer Guitar neck (maybe too long) to fit both 5 fret controls and 6 fret controls in one.

INSTRUCTIONS: 

Low-Profile Brown switches are being used. Full-size switches will work, however will be more exposed and the buttons will not cover the entire switch.

The fret buttons have an elongated stem. You will need to add support if printed right side up, or printed upside down without support. 

Use an image of the guitar hero live controller for reference. The fret buttons are named black 1 through 3 and white 1 through 3. 

Use the MiniCaster body and instructions for most of the construction. 

Wire these fret buttons to the Pi in their own spot

Green, red, yellow, blue, orange, white 3. 

You will then use shorter wires to jumper the remaining buttons to the colored buttons according to this:

Green > Black 1

Red > Black 2

Yellow > Black 3

Blue > White 1

Orange > White 2 

Program this guitar as a guitar hero live Controller using the 6 black and white buttons. If you choose a normal guitar hero controller you won't have a button to set as white 3. 

Open clone hero and set the controls. 

You can now swap 5 or 6 fret controls on the fly!

Note: If the buttons seem to be a little sticky try turning them 90 degrees. 

FOR LEFTIES:

in its current state Clone Hero isn't working correctly for 6 fret lefty gameplay.  The notes appear in the wrong orientation making gameplay extremely hard. 

The following is a work around using a second raspberry pi and using separate wires for the 6 frets. It's messy but it works-ish until we get an update to CH that fixes the issue. 

YOU  WILL NEED TO MAKE ANOTHER HOLE IN THE BODY FOR THE SECOND PI.

For full use of both types of control I used two separate Pi Picos. One is wired to one set of the fret buttons, strum buttons, and the start and select buttons. 

Each fret button is wired separately to their respective board EXCEPT for the ground wire. I made one long ground wire, connected to both Pis, then routed it up to the neck. Every fret button is soldered to this one wire. 

The Second Pi is wired to the second set of fret controls. 

For the strum buttons and start and select buttons, and ground wire on the second Pi:

I cut off a section of the insulation on each buttons positive wire, soldered in a jumper that gets soldered to the second Pi. 

I soldered 1 ground wire to the second pi and jumped it into the existing ground wire that runs through the guitar to the first Pi. 

When programing the GH Live controller in Santroller swap Black 1-3 and White 1-3. This is because while in game on lefty mode Black notes appear facing up and White faces Down regardless of lefty mode or not. So programming your controller this way ensures black is on the top of your neck!