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Synaesthesia
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SuRfReAk
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Joined: 19 Dec 2004
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Synaesthesia
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Joined: 03 Apr 2005
Location: Crushing all deceivers, smashing non-believers |
4362.  Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 7:37 pm Post subject: |
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All right, I just play-tested my almost finished pad *   .* The good news is, every single connection works, and is very sensitive (tested on ITG, Anubis Expert, in case you were wondering). The bad news is, the connections appear to be *too* sensitive. More specifically, if you get to the menu, and stand off the pad, every few seconds, a button will randomly fire. When Anubis' quad-mines came, 2-3 went off each time, even though I completely stepped off the pad to see what was going on.
Some things worth noting are that the pad itself is not yet screwed into the baseboard. This is significant, becuase the non-arrow panels tend to lift into the air (the top-right one lifts over 1/4"). Also, I have not yet installed the weatherstripping--only foam core holds the 2 contacts apart.
So far, the only 2 ideas I have are 1) the metal bent over the sides of the non-arrows is brushing up against the contacts just enough to register a step, or 2) the contacts are brushing each other, becuase the foam core is not enough, and the weatherstripping is required. I don't think it should be static build-up, since all the non-arrows are connected, and I noticed the menu trick before I even set foot on the pad. Any ideas on which of my suspicions is correct, or if it's something else entirely which I'm overlooking?
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stoli
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Joined: 27 Mar 2005
Location: Southern NH |
| 4363. Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 9:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Aflac wrote: | | Stoli: drilling the holes from the base to the borders/squares, did you make a pilot hole? |
I didn't, but Ravenwing's suggestion is a good one.
| Quote: | | And is counter-sinking the screw holes necessary? |
I think so. Any part of the screw head that protrudes from the bottom will cause snagging on carpet and will scratch most floors. Then again, if you get the heads to seat deep enough and cover the entire bottom of the pad with a piece of carpetting or some type of padding, I guess it would be fine.
| Quote: | | For the lucite panels- about the silicone/rubber tubing, does that need to be flexible? My dad brought home some rubber tubing, but the size is 3/8 instead of 1/4". He also brought home some other type of tubing, clear, but hard and more like plastic. This hard tubing was the right size, 1/4", so i was wondering if this was usable for the screw shaft in the lucite. |
This is a tough one. Better to use the right size with a hard tubing than the wrong size with the flexible. The clear stuff might work fine. Try it out and if you have problems, go out and get the 1/4" flexible stuff. It should only cost about 25 cents per foot.
| Quote: | | For the Euscheteon pins, can i replace these with regular nails, or is there something special about those pins? Thanks a lot. |
I used them because they have nice rounded heads that won't slice through skin or scratch anything. From a functional standpoint, regular nails would work fine.
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Synaesthesia
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Joined: 03 Apr 2005
Location: Crushing all deceivers, smashing non-believers |
| 4364. Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 10:49 am Post subject: |
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Update: I laid down the weatherstripping on the bottom contacts, and the problem appears to have gotten worse.  When I'm not standing on the pad, the Up arrow flutters like crazy, and the Left arrow hits a lot, too. When I try to stand on the non-arrows (to hold them down, since they all pull upwards), the Right arrow starts to ghost step as well. I can easily slide things (like pipe cleaner) around, so I highly doubt the contacts are touching each other. Just looking at the pad, the metal contacts don't appear to be touching any other metal, so I don't think they could activate that way. Unless weatherstripping or duct tape can conduct electricity, I'm almost completely lost here... 
Update to the update: (7:20 PM, -5 GMT) Something is incredibly wrong with my pad. I took all the contacts apart, such that the bottom contacts (common) remained in their proper spots (attached to wooden base), and the top contacts (hot) laid next to them. Start the game up, and what's the result? Such furious button activation that the menu screen literally locks up multiple times, and is extremely jerky (judging from background animation, and actual menu scrolling) all the rest of the time. The best that my dad and I could come up with so far is that my pad is acting like a giant capacitor, of sorts, and is capturing charge from a neighboring electric field (probably the TV). The charge fluctuation in the plates is making the circuit board weirded out, and it thinks that buttons are being pressed. In a little while, I'm going to disconnect the wires from the contacts, and check the controller to verify its integrity. I'll then reconnect things one by one, testing each as I go; the trick is, unless the circuit board is the problem, I think the same electric field problem will occur. Any tips on dissipating fields, or maybe ways to circumvent them?
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Aflac
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Joined: 28 Mar 2005
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| 4365. Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Synaesthesia wrote: | Update: I laid down the weatherstripping on the bottom contacts, and the problem appears to have gotten worse. When I'm not standing on the pad, the Up arrow flutters like crazy, and the Left arrow hits a lot, too. When I try to stand on the non-arrows (to hold them down, since they all pull upwards), the Right arrow starts to ghost step as well. I can easily slide things (like pipe cleaner) around, so I highly doubt the contacts are touching each other. Just looking at the pad, the metal contacts don't appear to be touching any other metal, so I don't think they could activate that way. Unless weatherstripping or duct tape can conduct electricity, I'm almost completely lost here...
Update to the update: (7:20 PM, -5 GMT) Something is incredibly wrong with my pad. I took all the contacts apart, such that the bottom contacts (common) remained in their proper spots (attached to wooden base), and the top contacts (hot) laid next to them. Start the game up, and what's the result? Such furious button activation that the menu screen literally locks up multiple times, and is extremely jerky (judging from background animation, and actual menu scrolling) all the rest of the time. The best that my dad and I could come up with so far is that my pad is acting like a giant capacitor, of sorts, and is capturing charge from a neighboring electric field (probably the TV). The charge fluctuation in the plates is making the circuit board weirded out, and it thinks that buttons are being pressed. In a little while, I'm going to disconnect the wires from the contacts, and check the controller to verify its integrity. I'll then reconnect things one by one, testing each as I go; the trick is, unless the circuit board is the problem, I think the same electric field problem will occur. Any tips on dissipating fields, or maybe ways to circumvent them? |
that doesn't sound like a good thing. uhm... maybe you should check your soldering on the circuit board? I guess that's the only thing i can come up with. not sure how well you can test that though. If you can try moving the circuit board and your PS2/XB to another TV, preferably smaller, to try it out. |
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Synaesthesia
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Joined: 03 Apr 2005
Location: Crushing all deceivers, smashing non-believers |
| 4366. Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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I can test the circuit board's connections by simply touching the other ends of wire together, which is what I will do to rule out controller malfunction. Unfortunately, a different TV is not possible (this one is 20" and is ~3.5 feet from the leading edge of the whole apparatus), as I have to play DDR in the garage, and there's no other spare TV.
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geckoinc99
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Joined: 11 Feb 2005
Location: Chattanooga, TN |
| 4367. Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 5:48 pm Post subject: Pad Problems |
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Sounds like there's a possible short somewhere in the system. This is where a multimeter with a diode setting comes in handy. What you want to do is check to see if anything is crossing with one of your buttons. For instance, since you said you had problems with your up arrow, check to see if something on the pad is connected to the up arrow contact that shouldn't be. This includes all sheetmetal coverings, other button contacts, and anything metallic. Second, make sure you have a proper common (or ground for simplicity) going to each contact. Third, check for any crossed up connections. What did you use for your controller? A board from a softpad or an actual controller? I have found that the controllers will give you lots of problems and that it's better to just go ahead and use a softpad board. Good luck with the troubleshooting.
David
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Synaesthesia
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Joined: 03 Apr 2005
Location: Crushing all deceivers, smashing non-believers |
| 4368. Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 6:43 pm Post subject: Re: Pad Problems |
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| geckoinc99 wrote: | Sounds like there's a possible short somewhere in the system. This is where a multimeter with a diode setting comes in handy. What you want to do is check to see if anything is crossing with one of your buttons. For instance, since you said you had problems with your up arrow, check to see if something on the pad is connected to the up arrow contact that shouldn't be. This includes all sheetmetal coverings, other button contacts, and anything metallic. Second, make sure you have a proper common (or ground for simplicity) going to each contact. Third, check for any crossed up connections. What did you use for your controller? A board from a softpad or an actual controller? I have found that the controllers will give you lots of problems and that it's better to just go ahead and use a softpad board. Good luck with the troubleshooting.
David |
As far as I can tell, it's all arrows having the problem now (the menu is too possessed to be certain.). The *only* metal that even has a chance of touching any contact would the the metal screws below the contact linked to common. However, these screws only lead to wood, so that shouldn't have a negative effect (I think? If it does, that's a huge problem).
For the issue of common, I just followed the controller's circuit path, found the 4 contacts that led to common, and soldered each striped wire (the Cat5 telephone wire had 8 wires, 4 colors intertwined with 4 striped versions of the color) to the proper contact (I kept all the colors straight, if you were wondering).
When using a multimeter, it appeared that the 2 separate plates had the same potential difference as if I held the probes to the controller's solder points themselves (unless the difference is too small to read, but large enough to screw with the controller). Also, I didn't find any scratched or frayed wires when I inspected everything.
As you've probably interpolated, I'm using a PS1 controller. The reason I haven't tried a softpad board is that when I opened my LevelSix up to take a look (it has small red lights on it, by the way), it was the most whacked-out board I'd ever seen--it didn't even have any visible, traceable solder points. Also, I'm somewhat reluctant to re-solder, since I'm not very proficient at it, especially precision work on boards. Do you perhaps know of a picture of a typical softpad's board, so I can see what I'd be getting into before spending more money? (Note: I need X/Triangle/Start/Select functionality somehow, because I didn't incorporate anything but directional arrows into the pad design.)
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slvrshdw
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Joined: 05 Jan 2005
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| 4369. Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 7:10 pm Post subject: |
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i just used a circuit board from the pad, and its really easy to solder to
i drilled a SMALL hole in each of the points, and it makes it alot easier
i can get a pic if u really need it 
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Synaesthesia
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Joined: 03 Apr 2005
Location: Crushing all deceivers, smashing non-believers |
| 4370. Posted: Wed Jun 22, 2005 7:14 pm Post subject: |
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I was concerned about drilling, mostly worried about compromising the integrity of the area which I drilled. If the softpad circuit board has contacts basically the same size/shape of a controller (shape being the 2 semicircles, not the E-3 interlocking), that's good. However, what would I do to still have X/Start/etc. buttons?
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Aflac
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Joined: 28 Mar 2005
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| 4371. Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 3:57 am Post subject: Re: Pad Problems |
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| Synaesthesia wrote: |
As you've probably interpolated, I'm using a PS1 controller. The reason I haven't tried a softpad board is that when I opened my LevelSix up to take a look (it has small red lights on it, by the way), it was the most whacked-out board I'd ever seen--it didn't even have any visible, traceable solder points. Also, I'm somewhat reluctant to re-solder, since I'm not very proficient at it, especially precision work on boards. Do you perhaps know of a picture of a typical softpad's board, so I can see what I'd be getting into before spending more money? (Note: I need X/Triangle/Start/Select functionality somehow, because I didn't incorporate anything but directional arrows into the pad design.) |
I posted a picture of my own Gamestop softpad circuit board a few pages back. Lemme see if i can find it...
EDIT:  Here.
Along the top are the soldering points. The big one in the middle is the common, and the rest are the various buttons (start/select, O,X, triangle, and square included). The gunk that you see is just residue from the tape that the softpad used (yes the original contacts were taped, but they worked fine.). This design makes soldering very easy, as the contacts are HUGE compared to a controller, and you don't have to test for each individual common, because there's a common common in the middle  . For soldering to the common i guess you would have to intertwine all the common wires from the pad together and then solder that to the circuit board, but it shouldn't be anywhere near as difficult as soldering to a controller. |
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Synaesthesia
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Joined: 03 Apr 2005
Location: Crushing all deceivers, smashing non-believers |
| 4372. Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 7:57 am Post subject: |
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Are the individual points labeled, or is determining what each contact corresponds to a matter of contact-testing through the menu?
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Heffenfeffer
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Joined: 22 Apr 2002
Location: Las Cruces, NM |
| 4373. Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 8:37 am Post subject: Poor solder. (/british) |
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| Synaesthesia wrote: | | Are the individual points labeled, or is determining what each contact corresponds to a matter of contact-testing through the menu? |
Well, it depends on the pad. A lot of store-brand special pads seem to use the Topway circuit board, and these aren't labeled. However, some brands have the reference key printed on the back of the PCB, so depending on the pad, you might get lucky.
If not, then find the rest of the pad you extracted the brain from and trace the connections from each panel (there's a wafer-thin contact sheet with visible traces inside the softpad) to the circuit board with your finger. That'll do the trick. Of course, yes, multimeter/option screen testing will work as well, but what's the fun in that?
Also, although you can drill (since these things aren't complex enough to use double-sized PCB's), you don't really have to. I just soldered a wire onto a visible solder point for each particular button and taped each wire down with electrical tape. Any solder point on the pad side before the diodes and Black Glob o' Complicated Stuff(tm) should be fine - I think that these diodes are what keeps the softpad from frying after one minute of play.
So, for instance, if you want to wire a button to the far right contact in Aflac's softpad, then solder to the highest of the second-right-most solder points. Don't solder to the one below that one, or you could risk burning out your pad.
For the common common, I put all my grounds together, stripped them, braided them, bent a hairpin curve in them, and then liberally applied solder until I had a large gray lump of connected grounds. Then, I soldered a single wire to that and soldered the other end to the pad common, and sealed the gray lump off with more electrical tape. I was thinking about doing this at the University meeting center with several other people so that I'd have a...(wait for it)...
common Commons common common!
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slvrshdw
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Joined: 05 Jan 2005
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| 4374. Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 8:46 am Post subject: |
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ive opened 3 pads
2 of tehm were labeled, 1 wasnt
the one that wasnt was the cheap ps2/ps gamestop kind
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Synaesthesia
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Joined: 03 Apr 2005
Location: Crushing all deceivers, smashing non-believers |
| 4375. Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 1:19 pm Post subject: |
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Well, I now know for sure it is the TV's fault. I turn the game on, get baseline readings of voltage/inductance/resistance by touching the multimeter probes to the actual soldered contacts on the controller. I then measure each of these between the contacts--they all correlate. Now I turn on the TV. Current and resistance remain constant, but voltage drops by .6 to .8 volts. I'm guessing the plates are acting as capacitors, and that's why voltage is dropping, but current is staying constant. So, the alternating magnetic field generated by the television is causing voltage drops on my contacts. The circuit board, not being that smart, "knows" that if voltage drops at all, that should be a button being pressed (it "assumes" any drop in voltage is a drop to 0, and nothing in between--at least, I'm pretty sure voltage drops to 0 when you press a button down.). So, it interprets the potential difference drop as circuit closure, and sends the input to the PS2. Aside from the idea of using a TV with a not-large oscillating field, what might work to stop this problem? Would the placemat circuit board be resistant to this voltage-button-firing, or could I hook up something in the wires (capacitors, resistors maybe?) to heal the problem?
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Tenesu
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Joined: 05 Feb 2004
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| 4376. Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 3:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Synaesthesia wrote: | | Well, I now know for sure it is the TV's fault. I turn the game on, get baseline readings of voltage/inductance/resistance by touching the multimeter probes to the actual soldered contacts on the controller. I then measure each of these between the contacts--they all correlate. Now I turn on the TV. Current and resistance remain constant, but voltage drops by .6 to .8 volts. I'm guessing the plates are acting as capacitors, and that's why voltage is dropping, but current is staying constant. So, the alternating magnetic field generated by the television is causing voltage drops on my contacts. The circuit board, not being that smart, "knows" that if voltage drops at all, that should be a button being pressed (it "assumes" any drop in voltage is a drop to 0, and nothing in between--at least, I'm pretty sure voltage drops to 0 when you press a button down.). So, it interprets the potential difference drop as circuit closure, and sends the input to the PS2. Aside from the idea of using a TV with a not-large oscillating field, what might work to stop this problem? Would the placemat circuit board be resistant to this voltage-button-firing, or could I hook up something in the wires (capacitors, resistors maybe?) to heal the problem? |
I doubt it's a capacitance issue. The capacitance between the plates is going to be very very small since you have air between them. The likely culprit is that your TV is producing electromagnetic interference that's being picked up by either the controller or the pad. The reason you're seeing a constant voltage drop is because the DMM (in DC mode) basically averages the high and low voltages. The actual voltage is probably a sine wave varying around that level. Also, the voltage in a digital circuit has to pass below a certain value to be considered "off". Likewise, it has to pass above a certain value to be considered "on". If the voltages in the controller are TTL (0-5V) then off is anything below about 0.5V and on is anything above about 4.2V.
The best way to elminate noise problems in this case is by
1) elminating any unnecessary loops of wire (loops act as antennas and pick up radiated noise)
2) by using the shortest lengths of wire possible (also act as antennas)
3) by using one common point to ground and by making sure all ground wires return to that point (elminates ground loops which act as antennas)
4) and, if necessary, by shielding the wires in the pad/controller. (annoying, you'll have to wrap all the wires in metal and ground the metal to earth ground, not controller ground)
TV's also tend to radiate EM interference in certain directions. Try moving the pad around to see if you can get better results. Also, since EMI decreases with distance, try moving the pad as far away as possible. If none of those work you can use capacitors to "absorb" some of the noise but this might lead to decreased sensitivity. |
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HitokiriX
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Joined: 27 Mar 2004
Location: Berwyn, PA |
| 4377. Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 4:44 pm Post subject: |
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Amazing.....I never knew that TV's could interfere with your DDR pad control board! Wow....yeah I can't really think of any solution to solve that so I'm just gonna act surprised.  |
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wi11 721
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Joined: 21 Jun 2005
Location: in front of my comp, VA |
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Synaesthesia
Trick Member
Joined: 03 Apr 2005
Location: Crushing all deceivers, smashing non-believers |
| 4379. Posted: Thu Jun 23, 2005 7:26 pm Post subject: |
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The trick is, the controller doesn't pick up on this by itself, because its contact area is small. The interference is much more noticeable because the contact plates are so large (by comparison). [/half-informed hypothesis]
Tomorrow, I'm going to see if I can't scrounge up an extension cable for the controller, so I can back the pad much further away from the television, in hopes that will put it far enough away from the interference. In case that doesn't work, if I had some large loops of wire nearby (not connected to the pad), would they absorb a signficant amount of interference, or not enough?
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