Ryan Sturmer from Googlemarks has come up with a creative way to increase your score on Guitar Hero with the help of a small electronic hack!

"The idea of this hack is to enable the controller with an "auto" mode that simulates the constant jostling of the whammy bar at all times, maximizing the points accumulated while playing. We want this mode to be optional, so that the guitar can be played as normal when you don’t feel like cheating.

A current is passed through the pot, and a resultant voltage is sampled by a circuit that is a mystery to me because it’s a cheap bare-die circuit buried beneath a blob of black goop. The important thing is that this circuit is what causes the "whammy" effect, and if we can force it with an external signal, we can emulate that effect without actually having to move the whammy bar mechanically. For this, I used the old standby, the 555 Timer."