Help with the metal mat making

oranges · Trick Member Joined: 05 Nov 2003

Ok, I want to make a metal mat, but I've had very little experience with solder. I don't get the whole grounding thing and I need a compatable controller I posted this in another section so don't be all up in my grill ( I such a wigger) I really would like it if someone gave me to a link to a thurough(sp?) guide, not like the one here. Help would be greatly appreciated.

Ikonomi · Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2003 12:56 am Post subject:

You should really look at the home-built pad thread. It contains a lot of information which you might find helpful. It might even include detailed soldering instructions.

This thread will probably be locked, but I'll reply anyway:

Soldering grounds is very simple. To make an electrical circuit like the ones in DDR pads, you need a hot wire and a ground wire. That means that for each arrow panel, you have two wires going to the controller board.

One of them, your hot wire, you have to solder to the appropriate contact on your controller board for each arrow. You can attach these to the small circles of copper that are labeled in ddrhomepad's guide.

The grounds are a little different, though. You can either solder the ground wires to the other half of the contact for each arrow, or solder all the wires to a single ground. The latter is generally easier. You can use a spot like the one labeled ground on ddrhomepad's picture. Just take all the ground wires coming from your panels, twist and solder them together to one lead wire, and solder that to the ground point.

Step by step for a four-panel pad:

0. Examine your controller board! Once you understand how the circuits are laid out, this will be a whole lot easier. Trace the little bands of copper that lead to and from the buttons.

1. You should have eight wires in total, two for each panel. Take one wire from each panel and solder it to the corresponding direction -- up, down, left, right. Use the small copper circles near the button locations as solder points. These are your hot wires.

2. Take the remaining four wires and twist the ends together with a single lead wire which will be soldered to the controller. Apply solder to the wire joint to make it more durable and wrap in it electrical tape.

3. Take the lead wire and find a spot that doesn't look like it corresponds to any of the directions. Look at ddrhomepad's pic for an example. Solder the lead wire to that point. This is your ground.

If you can't find a circle like that, then you can solder directly to the button contacts -- the areas that look like hands with interlaced fingers beneath each button. Solder the ground to the copper "hand" that DOES NOT touch the "hand" on the side you soldered the hot wire to.

4. Test your connections and enjoy. If you don't have any soldering experience, I highly recommend you check out the home built metal pad thread in this forum, and use Google to find simple guides and tips. Soldering can be a pain in the butt if you go into it without any technical guidance.

...

As for what controller to use, you can find one of the GameStop ones like that, or do as I did and use a Mad Catz PS1 controller. $5.88 at Wal-Mart, and easy to solder to. They're the ones that come in transparent colors.
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oranges · Trick Member Joined: 05 Nov 2003

Thankyou oh so much.

oranges · Trick Member Joined: 05 Nov 2003

ok so I decided to use my ripped mat's circuit board.

VxJasonxV · Posted: Sat Nov 15, 2003 1:19 am Post subject:

Yes.
A long overdue lock.
Metal Pad discussion goes here.
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