My home built metal DDR pad (Part IV)

[Heffenfeffer]

Hey folks, just dropping in to announce that I've completed my homebuilt pad! Pictures and all are forthcoming. I dunno if I'll build another one for doubles or not yet - this little "should take a month" project has taken up nearly nine months of time.

Lessons learned:

1) For the love of caramel, use a softpad control board (or ground your pad)! I've lost no less than five controllers, each taking less than a minute to fry, due to static electricity.

2) Jigsaws are your friend. It's damn hard to cut through sheet metal with tin snips, and it leaves a whole bunch of jagged edges. Save yourself a little trouble and get (or borrow) a jigsaw with a metal-cut blade. Same goes for plexiglass (just be sure to back off a bit to keep the plexi from melting into glue.)

3) Read the plans throroughly before you do stuff. I've got a few nicely drilled holes in my pad for stuff that I later found had to be moved, and a few raggedly put holes in my pad for holes that I found had to be put in after stuff was bolted together, preventing me from getting a good angle to work the drill with. Oh yeah, and the drill has become my new best friend - it's a hole-maker and high-speed screwdriver all in one!

4) Careful with the sautering iron - a couple of waves of it caused several of my wires to fuse together. On the plus side, I learned that once I seperated them, I could just splash on a little latex paint to cover them up again.

5) Test, test, test. Near the end, everything was working but the down arrow. I unscrewed the panel holding the control box open, the metal pad-section above it, and plugged in the iron before deciding to check with a multimeter - then I discovered that I put the metal-with-plexi panel upside down so that the metal was on top. So, yeah, ten minutes of panic followed by ten minutes of my putting all the wires back in and calling myself a doofus.

At the moment, it's working fine, though, I need to adjust the sensitivity - stepping on the bottom-right metal panel causes Right to be triggered. Ah well, that's for another day. Now I can finally beat Have You Never Been Mellow, a thorn in my side for nearly three years!
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"If something should happen to me, all the world's women will grieve!" - Edgar Rene Figaro

"Your charisma exceeds that of mortal men. Many would lay down their lives for you." - Fall-From-Grace

[cb_epyon]

http://www.angelfire.com/d20/ddrhomepad/metalonpeg.html that will give u an idea of what im talking about. the foam is the 4 white things around the corners. im not sure if i should make sure its 3/16'' or if i could just use the 2 mm foam.
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[ch]

congrats heffenfeffer! i wanna c ur picz!

cb, the foam core is only there to keep the lucite from hitting the wood when you bottom out the arrow. i think 2mm would work fine. or, you could use a mousepad, like he said.
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CStarFlare wrote:

I approve of the direction this thread is going

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch?e=20090310025322668

[Heffenfeffer]

Hey again folks! Welp, after a couple hours on the pad (finally! Taking time away from building a pad and asking questions on it to, you know, actually play DDR for once!) I seem to have hit my first snag - the down arrow is wayyyy too sensitive! It's so sensitive that if it accidentally calls me stupid and then buys me ten pounds of chocolate and half of Flowerama's stock. Not only that, but it also responds to a hair trigger, it also sometimes it doesn't come back up in time to react to the next step - hence, quick repeated 1/8th notes are missed.

So can anyone that had this problem of too much sensitivity (right up there with being too rich or having too much time on your hands) help me out?

Thanks!

Pictures are still forthcoming - This is the busiest Thanksgiving Weekend ever...
_________________

"If something should happen to me, all the world's women will grieve!" - Edgar Rene Figaro

"Your charisma exceeds that of mortal men. Many would lay down their lives for you." - Fall-From-Grace

[Ravenwing]

I would recommend increasing the distance between the arrow and the ground trigger. Either that, or use a denser material, so it takes more pressure to make contact.
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We all LIVE, therefore we are all EVIL, because the two words are one and the same...
...Oni mode is LIVE.

[Silvesti]

I'm currently using Riptide's design which has been great! However, I'm having some issues with the controller. Here is my setup:

PS1 controller
RedOctane Dual USB Adapter

To test these connections I use WinXP and go to: Start->Settings->Control Panel->Game Options->Properties

When I step on an arrow the button will turn on in the Properties window. So here is what happens:

Registers fine
Left
Right
Up
Down
Left + up
Left +down
Right + up
Right +down

Has problems
Left + right // right button flickers and is not solid
Up + down // down button flickers and is not solid

Anyone else run into this flicker problem? The individual buttons seem to work fine. They also work fine in pairs as long as it is NOT it's opposite. Any suggestions?

Thanks for all your comments!

[moonmen0]

hey Silvesti what program are you using for you adapter? and did you do the start select and up to activate the box?
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WHAT WAS I THINKING WHEN I READ 100+ PAGES OF POSTS?

[HitokiriX]

For the first month that i had DDR Konamix and didn't have my metal CG pad I played with my controller. What I learned was that the circular buttons act as directional buttons too just like the d pad arrow buttons. you could attach the directional arrow buttons on your pad to the contacts for the square, triangle, x and circle buttons. unfortunately if you do this you can't use the triangle button contact for a cancel button or play any japanese ddr games since you need the x button as an enter button in the japanese versions.

[Silvesti]

[moonmen0]

i dont know whats up, but when i was setting up my pad, i built a parallel adapter and it works great except that it kind slowed down my computer but other than that, (i am using psx pad) when i go into the setup i cant do up and down and left and right, but in stepmania i ahve no problems.
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WHAT WAS I THINKING WHEN I READ 100+ PAGES OF POSTS?

[hirme]

[ch]

parallel port adapters have no problem with any of the opposite direction buttons. thats y i built one and posted instructions for others to do! its only a few bucks, ppl! usb adapters are scewey!
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http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/index.php?module=see&l=uk&code=36e44d4914f14070cc5b3d4c6bcd1042

CStarFlare wrote:

I approve of the direction this thread is going

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch?e=20090310025322668

[moonmen0]

there is no reason to build your own unless you are into that, because you can buy them online for cheaper than you can buy the controller extension
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WHAT WAS I THINKING WHEN I READ 100+ PAGES OF POSTS?

[Silvesti]

[hirme]

if the solder isn't sticking to hit, try using a crewdriver to peel a bit where you are going to solder...
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http://www.imageshosted.com/images/6730462pads.jpg

[Ulala321]

[zambi]

I have a problem, I messed up a bit with the directions and have to work with this another pic: here I have to fill 1 1/2 inches of space for the arrows. Any ideas?

[DarkDragon696]

I know there are a couple people that have the arrow graphics posted on this post but how do i go about getting them onto paper thats the right size???? thankx

[mtwieg]

[mtwieg]