My Zero dollar hard pat challenge

edbenn · Basic Member Joined: 05 Jun 2004

I have challenged myself and anyone else who wants to join to build a decent hard pad without paying money out of pocket. I have some wood laying around, so the pad is going to be wood based. The actual step arrows, are going to be made from this hardwood flooring material left over from when my stepdad floored my kitchen. I want to try and make it durable enough for use with shoes. The base, is a piece of plywood i got for free when i did a soft pad hard mod, sadly that pad is now in DDR heaven. The non-moving parts, are peices of this side wall paneling, which have grooves that i will fit wireing underneith. The wires, will be from a cat5 cable I stole from a friend. The control box, will be a playstation controller my friend gave to me in exchange for use of the completed pad. What I need help with is what should I use to cover the corner pieces, to prevent splinters, and what kind of sensor system should I use? I will get some pics up when I get a chance.
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balrg

Da Bar · Posted: Tue May 30, 2006 12:03 pm Post subject:

i'd like to know how you intend to do this with networking cable.
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edbenn · Basic Member Joined: 05 Jun 2004

well i just opend up the cat5, and there are only 4 cables in it, so ill have to hand wire a ground to the controller.
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balrg

marcan · Trick Member Joined: 28 Jul 2005

Here's how I would do it. Zero dollar and really easy to build, and you don't even need you own controller

go to microchip.com, get samples for [insert proper PIC here, too lazy to look it up. Needs INTOSC to avoid usage of external parts] (free). Grab a programmer (borrow one or build one of those "light bulb" programmers which, although not exactly compliant to the PIC specs, work often enough and are $0). Make a program.

Cut a piece of wood to DDR pad size. Make four metal contacts. Put them where the arrows would be. Wire up single wires to each of them. Glue them on/whatever. Anything metal that conducts electricity will work.

Get any four "things" that score some 500-1000k on an ohmmeter. I'm sure you could find a bunch of stuff or steal real resistors from some broken gadget. Decent electronics shops will even give you a few of them for free: the bulk cost is about $0.01 each. I get them for free.

Wire it up. The resistors and the metal contacts and your foot form an R-C network. The PIC has a program that senses when you touch the contacts and works like a PS2 pad with touch sensors (yes, it works. I've tried it). You do have to play barefoot though. Or put thumbtacks into your shoes to establish electrical contact.

I'm actually going to build one of these once I finish my "real" pad, for fun. Hey, it's zero cost. Particularly for me, since I already have the programmer and a bunch of PICs around, and the resistors.

If anyone cares about the theory: the resistors provide a high-resistance path for current to flow from one pin of the PIC to another. When you touch the receiving side, your body acts like a capacitor and delays the time it takes for current to accumulate to the proper voltage at the other side. PIC senses it and tells the PS2.

It would also be practically unbreakable. No moving parts!

ceraf · Posted: Tue May 30, 2006 2:42 pm Post subject:

^whoa...i really want to try that....although i don't know what INTOSC is.

Edible Bondage Tape · Trick Member Joined: 26 Jan 2002 Location: Kerri

edbenn · Basic Member Joined: 05 Jun 2004

Here are my photos, sorry about the quality, all I could find was my cameraphone.

This is my wireing job.

This is a close up of the controller.

This is the side paneling that the static pieces will be.

This is the base of the pad. A nice peice of plywood.

This is the floor board that the buttons will be made of.

[/img]
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balrg

marcan · Trick Member Joined: 28 Jul 2005

INTOSC just means it can run with no external clock (it has an internal RC clock), so you save parts.

edbenn · Basic Member Joined: 05 Jun 2004

The controller box is finished, here is my controller.

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balrg

Mariogirl · Trick Member Joined: 09 Sep 2005

You could always just STEAL a mat from a friend instead of parts to make one.

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edbenn · Basic Member Joined: 05 Jun 2004

ehh no point in stealing, I have three wireless pads from Pelecan. I just want to make myself a hard pad.
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balrg

ceraf · Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 1:01 pm Post subject:

seems like you've wired it up by each of the contact pairs...i believe you could have used one contact for each button and one commond ground wire. meh, you're done. don't fix it if it ain't broke. =) just that it might get to wire-cluttered after a while.

btw marcan, how would you "program" the PIC? Interfacing and programming is really out of my league.

edbenn · Basic Member Joined: 05 Jun 2004

here are my corner peices, i spraypainted them metallic, to look a little metal, hahah. I got the spraypain a while ago when I modded my xbox, so it technically doesnt count.

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balrg

ceraf · Posted: Wed May 31, 2006 7:12 pm Post subject:

so, this would be more of a Build-A-DDR-Mat-With-Anything-You-Can-Find-Around-The-House Challenge? XD

hope your mat turns out well!

edbenn · Basic Member Joined: 05 Jun 2004

Well this is all the panel and step pads all laid out, now I just need to work on the sensor system.

I also just discovered that we have no more foil. Damn food making processes that use foil. I found foil cupcake thingys, so I will use these as the metal contacts in the sensors.

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balrg

edbenn · Basic Member Joined: 05 Jun 2004

More pics, the non moving panels, and the wireing to the sensors is all set up.

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balrg

slvrshdw · Trick Member Joined: 05 Jan 2005

first of all, you do know that aluminum foil WILL wear out eventually right?

anyway...its great that you are doing it..i mean trying to do it...for free *thumbs up*

however, i think you might have to spend about $10 for decent metal (sheet metal) for teh contacts/weatherstripping)

anyway, thats just from my experience, so keep it up, and PROVE ME WRONG..if you can

anyway, have fun...looks good so far

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edbenn · Basic Member Joined: 05 Jun 2004

Thanks. I am all done. I've tested it, and about 75% it works all the time. lol

Here is the final picture

Eventually I will put some money into it to make it a little better, mabe a better base, more uniform screws, washers to hold the panels down, as of right now, I can remove them quite easily. If anyone has questions about making a no cost DDR pad, and some ideas on material imporvision, just ask away, and I'll see what I can do.
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balrg

mthegreatone · Trick Member Joined: 25 Sep 2005

sweet, it's literally like a poor man's pad. but yeah as someone mentioned it's best to use sheet metal for better sensor contact. in any case, it's amazing how far you got without putting money into it.