My home built metal DDR pad (Part IV)

geckoinc99 · Trick Member Joined: 11 Feb 2005 Location: Chattanooga, TN

Marquistadorous,
Search back a few pages (maybe 5-10) and there should be a small discussion on lights. There should be a link to a light design made by Marcan. Basically, LED lighting would be the easiest. Also, you will need a separate power supply for lights. Console system controllers just don't supply enough power to make enough light for pad use. If you need more help, I can certainly aid in that. I haven't added lights, but I know what to do (haven't had the money to get them added).

Vesper,
If you're looking for arcade like feel, Riptide's is probably the closest. Stoli's design is great, but it doesn't have the corner brackets. My pad doesn't have the corner brackets either and when I played at an arcade for the first time, I had to adjust for the brackets (they get in the way). So you definitely want a corner bracket design. Everyone's design is certainly possible for new builders, it just takes some time. My advice would be to read over everyone's design pages and learn from all of them. Stoli has some great info on the stationary pads. Riptide's contact system works very well (what I'm using currently). One suggestion that I make with Riptide's contacts is to make a change where you make the sheetmetal on the plexiglass all common and make the mending strips all power. That way you just have to make contact in one spot only. Just a thought. Just read through all these pages ( I know there's a lot) and you will find lots of information. Good luck with the build.
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zombiejesus9001 · Trick Member Joined: 05 Apr 2004

Ok question I want to build a pad but use arcade censors and acutal peices from the arcade. So I was thinkin of buying like the panels and metal panels from channelbeat and getting the censors from someplace and just build the pad.

So my question is has anyone attempted this before? If so can you give a guide or pointers? Also does anyone have inside pics of an arcade pad from a side and above view?

When it comes to wiring the censors does it connect to a board and I wired that or do I wire all 4 censors on an arrow to a button on the psx controller?

Also there was a few metal pads I saw on here were they had metal siding. How did you do that or get the metal siding? I was thinkin of using that or rubber siding.

vesper · Trick Member Joined: 06 Dec 2005

Does anyone still have the videos from Riptide's site, I imagine they went down a long time ago

geckoinc99 · Trick Member Joined: 11 Feb 2005 Location: Chattanooga, TN

Zombiejesus,
First of all, what is your reason for wanting to build a pad using arcade parts? It definitely wouldn't be a cost savings (would probably double or tripple your cost). If you're doing it for ease, then maybe I could understand, though I'm not sure how easily everything would go together. If that's the route you want to go, then by all means do, just realize it may not be as easy as you may expect.

No, as far as I know no one has tried to put one together from arcade parts. People have looked at using the contact switch before, but the price ($10 each currently) and the need for 16 (that's $160 right there, you can build a pad for that) has stopped most from using it. You don't really gain an advantage in using it over the contact systems that others have come up with. Here's a link to an article on DDR Freak about the insides of the arcade pad:

http://www.ddrfreak.com/library/contributor-article.php?postID=7909984

You would wire the pads the same way the home builts are, except that you no longer have sheetmetal on the plexiglass. The switch is contained in the rubber switch piece. It should have two wires on it. Wire one to common and one to the specific button's power.

People have covered their pads with sheetmetal usually by wrapping it over wood. You can glue it in place with something like contact cement or use screws to hold it on, it's up to you. Check out Stoli's site at:

http://home.comcast.net/~stoli16/ddr/index.html

Also, read back over this posting. I know there are a lot of pages, but there is a great amount of knowledge in it. Happy building!

David
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MinN_Limited · Posted: Mon Mar 20, 2006 6:46 pm Post subject:

slvrshdw · Trick Member Joined: 05 Jan 2005

ok guys, ive got a few videos that i made but youtube AND putfile wont work for me

anyone wanna host them for me? (AIM/email me for the vids)
thanks to anyone who can do it for me...just host it on youtube/putfile...i cant seem to get it working myself

and i will soon be getting a video of the *mostly* completed DDR Cabinet/Machine. i got the video card yesterday and its awesome

*will get pics soon of that...possibly vids if someone can upload them*
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vesper · Trick Member Joined: 06 Dec 2005

slvrshdw · Trick Member Joined: 05 Jan 2005

ok guys, somehow youtube worked now

anyway, i dont think i need to send anyone the vids unless they want them (so i guess disregard my PM vesper THANKS ANYWAY though)

heres the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RptSpfu1qi0

its not the best (ok its bad) quality, but it proves the point

i can get more if people want them

*btw, im fixing my pad now...hopefully i will get new videos when im done(im making the sensors as quiet as i can...so far so good)
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vesper · Trick Member Joined: 06 Dec 2005

slvrshdw · Trick Member Joined: 05 Jan 2005

for building 2 pads at once...its actually just a bit more money here and there for the extra pad

and riptides was based of homepad
his main difference was his contacts...im not sure how the full sheet metal ones work, but im redoing mine...it was like riptides, but now its like...i think my own version

ill get pics after i get it all working..(hopefully not too long)

and im getting a 7 min video of (poor quality), of me and my friend playing a few songs)

will edit this post when im done uploading
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vesper · Trick Member Joined: 06 Dec 2005

I've heard of people doing sheet metal mods for their afterburners so it sounds pretty good.

Nice job on KCET by the way, those jackhammers own me

Matrlx · Trick Member Joined: 22 Jan 2006

The differences between DDRHomepad and Riptide's are in the base, sensors, and corner bracket setups.

DDRHomepad has all the corner brackets connected to the metal panels for one big frame. Bad idea, IMO. If you ever need to get under the panels for fixing for adjustments it becomes a real big hassle (which could happen quite often when you're first starting off with the pad). I would reccomend the way Riptide has the corner brackets, which is what my pad uses right now, which is sort of a mash between Riptides brackets, Stoli's base, and my own sensors.

As for the base, Riptide uses several 2x4's. It's pretty sturdy as a result, but also becomes bulky. Stoli's base works much better if you want the borders in there to put them side-by-side for doubles. It's up to you really. It leaves room for lights underneath the arrows which is a plus. I made a compromise with Stoli's base and use a large sheet of plywood with a smaller layer of 'support' pieces underneath to leave myself a little space for lights and to keep the height of the pad smaller.

The big difference is the sensors, the likenesses being the weather stripping and the metal panels glued to the arrow panels, and the difference being what lies underneath that metal sheet. Again, Riptide's accomodates for lights. I'm going to advocate my sensors again here though =P. If you take a look a page back you can see what mine look like. No weatherstripping or metal panels, and there's a video that shows it does really well.
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Matrix Arcade Style DDRHomepad: http://members.shaw.ca/lluk/ddrpad/

vesper · Trick Member Joined: 06 Dec 2005

Matrlx · Trick Member Joined: 22 Jan 2006

You're looking for these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004Z0V0/qid=1143059333/103-4378716-8291831
But they're unavailable right now, it's usually better off just to goto a Home Depot or similar hardware store to get these.
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Matrix Arcade Style DDRHomepad: http://members.shaw.ca/lluk/ddrpad/

vesper · Trick Member Joined: 06 Dec 2005

Haha yeah those are the ones, I'm going to do a mega Home Depot / Lowes run on Saturday, and then on Monday I'm going to bring all of my stuff into school. I'll be carrying A LOT of equipment with me, but it's better than having to buy all those tools

HitokiriX · Trick Member Joined: 27 Mar 2004 Location: Berwyn, PA

So I went to Home Depot yesterday to get more supplies, mainly for my new contact design, and what do I find? 5" mending brackets are 74 cents each. This wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that I need 48 of them. Kinda adds up. So I'm thinking about just cutting 48 sheet metal rectangles and using those instead of mending brackets since they do the exact same thing, but they're just thinner. Does anyone see any problem in this? I might just raise the screws up a bit to adjust for the extra space or something, nothing big.

vesper · Trick Member Joined: 06 Dec 2005

http://www.digitaltorque.com/mydancepad/measure.html

I'm buying all of that tonight/tomorrow, and I just wanted to make sure I'm not missing anything. I'm going to buy a PS2 controller instead of PS1 just to be safe, is there anything else I should do?

Also, how would I go about getting the arrow graphics printed off. Do I save the images to a disk/cd and just bring them into a store, or does something else happen?

*EDIT* hit me up on AIM at alswimmer90 if you can chat

geckoinc99 · Trick Member Joined: 11 Feb 2005 Location: Chattanooga, TN

HitokiriX,
As long as they are supported underneath (by washers, which is the way the mending brackets are done), then it should be fine. I don't know how you're building your pad. I'm assuming you're doing Riptide's example since you're talking about mending brackets. If you have to raise it up, just support it enough and it should be fine. Good luck with that.

Vesper,
Make sure you get a controller that works. I would check this forum for ones that worked. One problem is that some controllers won't do Left-Right combos or UP-Down combos (because no game other than DDR would use these). That was a problem I ran into. They also seem more prone to damage by static electricity. Some have been able to successfully use the controllers. I tried to, but ultimately found it better to use a softpad controller. It's up to you though. Good luck either way.

Oh, and as far as printing the graphics go, what I did was put several copies of the file on a usb drive (one photoshop, one jpg, and one PICT). Having multiple formats makes sure that they should be able to open one. However, since my file originated from Photoshop, I made that the priority. Staples has photoshop, so they were able to open it with that and print the pictures. $1.76 for a 11x14 plain paper (which is what I wanted). Burning a CD would work as well.

David
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stoli · Trick Member Joined: 27 Mar 2005 Location: Southern NH

Kinkos accepts emails. Each store has a different address. I called the one nearest me, got their address and emailed them the files. Then I called them back to verify they got them, gave them very detailed instructions on how I wanted them printed and went in the next day to pick them up.

-Stoli
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vesper · Trick Member Joined: 06 Dec 2005

Thanks guys, it seems like a lot more places can print graphics off than I thought. I bought a Sony PS1 controller from Gamestop for about $5, I'll test it out soon and I hope it works