I made a video (I am currently finishing it and it will be posted soon) showing the process of soldering the necessary wires for using Pico Defuse for diagnosing and repairing Wii U consoles.

Before you begin this soldering job you will need:

-Raspberry Pi Pico with firmware already loaded. You can download the firmware from the github page linked above. It is the file named "pico_defuse.uf2" in the zip that you download.
-38 Gauge enameled wire.
-kapton tape

I use a microscope to show the soldering in the video, however you can certainly do this with the naked eye or a magnifying glass if you need one. I have a Microscope so I used it.

A couple things to keep in mind, some of these soldering points are extremely close to high voltage areas on the board that run to the GPU. You want to place Kapton tape over the board near the soldering points in these locations to protect them. Also when using the enameled wire you want to make sure you do not remove the enamel from any place on the wire except the ends. If you do and it touches the wrong point on the board you are going to have some serious problems that may not be repairable.

WORK SLOW, DOUBLE CHECK YOUR WORK AND AS ALWAYS LETS REPAIR THESE FAULTY Wii U!!!!!

The picture below is the wiring diagram to get this to work. It shows the pinout for the Pico and the Wii U testpoints. It should be noted that TP122 on the Wii U can be ignored if you are powering the Raspberry Pi Pico from a computer and plan on using a serial console aka Putty on Windows for example. If you are not sure about this my recommendation is to skip solder point TP122 and plug the Pico into a computer.

A couple things to note:
-If your Wii U consoles doesn't output a display you should use a serial console on the computer so that you can view and control the menu. This is extremely handy instead of blindly trying to diagnose/repair the Wii U. So if you are in this boat you can skip Solder Point TP122 as you will be plugging the Raspberry Pi Pico into a computer and it will get its power from there.

-If your Wii U console does output to a display, then you can power the Raspberry Pi Pico using the Wii U console by soldering the wire to TP122. This means you will probably just be using a TV and the power/eject button to navigate menus. The advantage to this method is you do not need a computer or usb cable to power the Raspberry Pi Pico.   





Youtube video will be posted 10/8/2024.

Here is a picture of a Wii U I installed defuse into. I chose to make the wires  long enough to wrap the Raspberry Pi Pico up and around to secure it to the plastic fan shroud. I don't know if this is the best way to do this and you could certainly do it many other ways, but this worked great for me. The idea is to diagnose and repair these consoles so the Pico would be removed after doing that as Defuse isn't necessary once its repaired.

A couple things to keep in mind, when you route the wires that attach to the Pico BE CERTAIN they do not go over any screw holes. Otherwise when you install some screws you could break the wires. I mention this because adding some screws to hold the board in place could be beneficial for some, especially if you have to move the console for testing as I did, because my computer is no where near my repair bench.