My home built metal DDR pad (Part IV)

[tolookah]

Before I go headfirst into a project that may go nowhere...

I am considering creating a complete electronic and lighting system for a DDR pad and with what I am thinking, I can avoid the use of a controller for both the playstation and xbox (xbox is a little trickier).

It is my goal to make this whole system (LEDs and all, 4 per arrow, 16 total) to cost less than $50 with circuitboard and wires (would need a printed circuit board to do the communication with the playstation and xbox) What I am wondering if there is a market for such a thing, as printed circuit boards are costly until you order lots. I would sell them for the $40 plus shipping(very close to at cost), or the PCBs and the chip programmed for ~$25 plus shipping, completely soldered waiting for inputs from the pad. If you are interested, send me a PM and if i get enough bites, that tells me that there's interest. I should have the first one built and tested by the end of summer (just PSX, quite a hack of a configuration to test it without a PCB really).

As a note, this system would use a 5V power brick (wall adapter) to run the LEDs and if the brick isn't plugged in, the LEDs will be off, otherwise, it will run off the system's power without lighting.

Edit: Just to make sure, this would be the electronics to the pad, but not the contacts, which are dependant on the pad you make.
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Aim: Tolookah
MSN: Tolookah
XBox: Tolookah
DDRPad Soldering and electrical Help: http://www.tolookah.net/DDR/ As hooded_paladin put it: "Currently, help for Beatpad Pro, official Sony Playstation Controller and ANY controller unless you are extremely stupid or lazy."

[geckoinc99]

Tolookah,
Sounds like a pretty intense project. Actually, when I first broke into a PS2 softpad, I thought the board didn't look that complicated at all. I thought about making a board myself, but figured I wouldn't be building more than two of these. I haven't looked at an XBox board so I don't know how complicated that would be.
One thing on your LEDs though. I'm assuming you're going to use white LEDs. If you do this, 5V would be a bad idea. A white LED has a voltage drop of at least 3.5V, some 3.8V. With four you're looking at a voltage drop of 14-15.2V. So you need at least that many volts to power the leds. Plus they recommend that the voltage drop be 80% of the total available voltage. This brings you to about 19V. You would just use a resister in series with the four LEDs to take care of the rest of the voltage. Make sure to have one resistor per pad.
Your idea sounds great. I just wanted to make sure you knew about a potential problem. That will help eliminate one thing to work out. If you have more questions about this, let me know.

David
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Life is very different 3000 feet above the earth with only a wing to hold you up....
Can't wait to be there again. Wanna join me? Visit http://www.hanglide.com

[slvrshdw]

why wouldnt he jsut use red and blue LEDs?


just a thought...i dont have lights in mine....for now hahaha
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[tolookah]

thanks for the heads up, but I'm already planning around that, I'm going to use a 5 volt power supply with an LED driver (LEDs are based on current, and the driver can make up to 100mA per LED, much higher than what I'm looking at) and run them in parallel, so instead of needing 17 V at 30mA, I will have 3ish V at 120mA. The power brick I am looking at can handle one amp, more if i shell out a few quarters more, so I will live with 5V across the board.

As for making the system, the PS is actually going to be the harder one to configure as i have to make the microprocessor I'm using use the playstation's serial line right, while the xbox is a USB connection with an extra (unused) wire, so i just need to do a little research there. If all works out as planned, the system should have no more than 6 major components(other than LEDs), but I'm waiting on some parts to come in to finalize that.

Edit: I plan on configuring it for a few different specific LEDs of different colors so there is a choice (also hope to make an idle blink routine)
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Aim: Tolookah
MSN: Tolookah
XBox: Tolookah
DDRPad Soldering and electrical Help: http://www.tolookah.net/DDR/ As hooded_paladin put it: "Currently, help for Beatpad Pro, official Sony Playstation Controller and ANY controller unless you are extremely stupid or lazy."

[Baby Lemonade]

Alright. Two problems here.

First off, soldering to the PS2 controller was a bear, and it ended up leaving my home-built pad sitting in my basement rusting for about 3 months. Any links to help me out would be great.

Secondly, the pad building trial 2 was just in effect last night. We decided to tear apart an old MadCatz soft pad and see how it worked. It's got that little control board thingy or whatever at the top of the pad, and about 10 lines heading to all the buttons. We followed each one to it's respective arrow and made and x and tri button. We got it working for about a song and a half and then it said the controller wasn't hooked up. Every time we'd hit the up arrow it would do this. So we checked the board and we couldn't get a response from the part of the board where we connected the wire for the up arrow. So we figured, MadCatz... crappy, and just tore up another. Same thing happened. A song and a half, then the down arrow did the same thing. What's going on?


Thanks all.

[SHSbrando]

Okay, i just built another pad using Stoli's design and its based off a PS2 controller. But I want to play DWI and PS2 but dont want to buy an adaptor. Is there any way i can do this without the use of an adaptor, or will i have to go out and buy one???

Thanks

[tolookah]

you could buy a DWI compatible controller and solder it, but i think the adapter may be cheaper...
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Aim: Tolookah
MSN: Tolookah
XBox: Tolookah
DDRPad Soldering and electrical Help: http://www.tolookah.net/DDR/ As hooded_paladin put it: "Currently, help for Beatpad Pro, official Sony Playstation Controller and ANY controller unless you are extremely stupid or lazy."

[Frosty555]

Not to advertise my own site or anything, but eh, it's a good cause
I've hosted Riptide's instructional videos on the Team D5R Video Blog

You can get at it on Team D5R's website here:

http://www.teamd5r.netfirms.com/videos.htm

And now, for blatant advertisment:

W00T GET YOUR RIPTIDE VIDEOS HERE!!!

Okay I'm done
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Team D5R - DDR team of Newmarket/Aurora

[NiGHTS Chao]

Hey, hopefully this is in the right forum/thread

Well after going through 2 controllers my pad still wont work, its because (probaly) my dad burnt the controller circut panel in fustration

i need another one now, can someone tell me what I should buy
(PS1 PS2) thats easy to solder and works and thats cheap
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1337

[slvrshdw]

your best bet would be a gamestop or EB games
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[NiGHTS Chao]

[slvrshdw]

oh...i misread the post, my bad

i think some people have some luck with mad katz (sp?)

but i recommend using a soft pad board rather than the circuit board for 3 reasons

1) its easier to solder to
2) isnt as proned to static shock (or whatever they say about it)
3) i lost 2 controllers, and my ONE pad circuit board is still fine after a few
months of heavy play

hope thatll help ya
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[NiGHTS Chao]

[tolookah]

the DDR soft pad circuit board is what he means ^^
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Aim: Tolookah
MSN: Tolookah
XBox: Tolookah
DDRPad Soldering and electrical Help: http://www.tolookah.net/DDR/ As hooded_paladin put it: "Currently, help for Beatpad Pro, official Sony Playstation Controller and ANY controller unless you are extremely stupid or lazy."

[NiGHTS Chao]

[Frosty555]

After building a couple pads, my personal recommendation is to get a standard 10-button PS1 controller, not a PS2 one. The best ones are those cheap third party ones without any special features. ESPECIALLY without an analog button.

The sony-brand PS1 controllers are no good because of the complex mesh-style contacts that will easily tear and become useless. Third part controllers also have a better tolerance to voltage abnormalities that you might very well get if you're going to connect to a computer.

I got the "superpad psx 1000" one from EB's used equipment bin for $5 canadian. Just LOOK at the contacts on that sucker! They're goliath sized!

http://teamd5r.netfirms.com/ps2circuit.htm
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Team D5R - DDR team of Newmarket/Aurora

[SHSbrando]

I am finally done with my third pad. I can play my PS2 versions, but I am really happy because i also made it compatable with my DWI without the use of an adaptor. I'll be posting pictures soon.

[stupidbarber]

I don't seem to be having much success at adjusting the sensitivity of the arrow switches on my Stoli-style pad, and I wonder if anybody has suggestions. I used the 3/8 X 3/16 inch weather stripping (high density black rubber foam) to separate the switch panels, and little bits of mouse pad in the corners, as Stoli said to. Actually, the way the pad is now, it works fine for me and my oldest kid, but the main player in the family, the middle kid, is too light to make the pads register every time. (He is the only one of us that does the 10-footers, and he can do them on an ignition pad, but not on the home made one.)

I tried screwing down the corner screws to decrease the distance between the metal squares, but that did not increase the sensitivity at all. I think it actually increased the tension on the lexan and made it harder to press. Would it be a good idea to replace the weather stripping with a more compressible foam? Change out the mouse pad bits for something thinner?

thanks...

[NiGHTS Chao]

Ok well if I get the superpad psx 1000 would I be able to easily solder it to the Triangle, O, X, Square buttons?

because I heard that so many people were having trouble making a pad when soldering the contacts to Up, Down, Left, Right and that the adapter/pad wouldnt register arrows like Up/Down or Left/Right (at the same time)

so I had the idea that I would solder it to Triangle, O, X, Square and program stepmania to set it as up down left right

it worked on the first two controllers I had, but my dad burnt the circut board and thus it 1) wouldnt always register 2) would hold buttons down at all times


????? Help me fix my dance pad so it works completly
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1337

[Heffenfeffer]