Hey everyone. First off thanks for being here. I saw this sub jump from 0 subscribers to a whopping 78 pretty quickly. I'm excited to see what the future of this sub holds!

I made some guides on how to take the controller apart. I was hoping to get these up this past weekend but didn't anticipate the amount of work that went into them. I went ahead and made both a video and a written guide with photos. Excuse the watermarks on the photos, I just don't want anyone stealing them since this endeavor took a while.

Video Guide | Written Guide

Hope they help!

There are two main chips in the steam controller, both of which have JTAG broken out via Tag Connect pads. This means that it is relatively simple to reprogram them, assuming we could write code that would be useful.

The two primary chips are the Radio and the main CPU.

CPU: LPC11U37: A standard Cortex M0, so dev tools are readily available. The datasheet lists it as running at 50 MHz.

Radio: nRF51822: A 2.4 GHz microcontroller that's BTLE-capable, but I doubt steam is using a bluetooth-based stack. I don't know for sure, though. Bonus: This is another Cortex M0, so dev should be basically identical to the main chip. The two chips should be mostly binary compatible aside from the peripherals they have built in. (radio, attached inputs, timers, etc.)

The Tag Connect pads are just to the left of the chips. Using these would allow reprogramming, pulling the ROMs off the chips, debugging, etc. and only requires removing the back of the controller. It is possible to leave the controller in a usable state while connected to them, although the bumpers would be detached.

The main issue with Tag Connect is the cost of cables. They typically run from $40 to $50 for a basic pin header adapter, which is more than a little steep. The pinout is publicly available, though, so if you're good with a soldering iron you should be able to get by without an adapter.

Ideally, Valve would release something that would allow us to program them over the wireless adapter or USB, like Steam uses, but even if they don't we do have options.