My home built metal DDR pad (Part IV)

Diet · Trick Member Joined: 15 Sep 2003 Location: California

I made my girlfriend a pad.

The pad:
http://i27.tinypic.com/30j66hh.jpg

And the control box:
http://i27.tinypic.com/hvcg87.jpg

Modeled after a cobalt flux. It took 1 month and cost about $170. Custom graphics by me. Yay.

She liked it.

kev0 · Trick Member Joined: 25 Aug 2007

Wow.

That is pretty impressive. Especially your graphics.

slvrshdw · Trick Member Joined: 05 Jan 2005

great, love the graphics

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Diet · Trick Member Joined: 15 Sep 2003 Location: California

Thanks. I made the graphics in Illustrator Cs2, then I printed them out onto large matte photo paper in an industrial printer and had them laminated at staples. The rest of the pad is pretty much a cobalt flux.

rlpowell · Trick Member Joined: 11 Dec 2003

I'll be making a couple of hard pads soon, probably based on Devout's stealth pad design. Can anyone recommend good PS2 controllers that I can use to make a hard pad without too much pain and suffering?

-Robin

Power Surge · Basic Member Joined: 02 Mar 2007

What's the best way to clean grime and sweat stains off of sheet metal and corner braces? And what else can I do to keep them clean? I recently finished my Riptide pad (slightly modified), which works great, and I want to keep it looking clean after heavy usage.

Also, to those considering building a pad, DON'T use ddrhomepad's design. Even though it was my first attempt at a home-built pad, I made sure to follow each step as closely as possible. When I finished, the frame was crooked, the buttons needed to be pressed hard to get a response, troubleshooting was a pain in the buttocks since I had to flip it over and unscrew the base to see what was wrong, etc. After a while, it just stopped working, so I took it apart and rebuilt it using Riptide's design. It worked great, but it malfunctioned again because of the sensors (made with screws and pieces of sheet metal). They seem to go out of whack the moment they become dirty, which happened very often.

Based on my experience, don't bother using any sensor design that uses sheet metal, metal braces, or anything similar. You'll save yourself a lot of time and money by using roller-lever switches or similar switches for the buttons instead. They each cost $2.79 at Radio Shack, and you only need one for each button (I can step on the buttons' edges and they still respond just fine). Solder the positive end to the end opposite of the roller tip and ground/negative end to the middle connector. To keep it in place, use a block of wood with a notch carved in the middle big enough to hold the switch (mine uses stacked pieces of pegboard because it's the only material I can work with at the moment). Insert nails thin enough to pass through the holes in the switch to keep it suspended, holding them in place with staples or screws (mine uses scotch tape because I don't have access to a staple gun or drill, but it works the way it should anyway).

Notice the screws that surround the switch. They're raised high enough to keep the plexiglass from hitting down too deep on the switch and risk damaging it, but low enough to allow the switch to be pressed. There's more screws along the border: three 1/2" screws at each corner raised at the same height as the other screws. They also have a thin layer of cushion over them to reduce noise and covered with scotch tape to keep them from sticking to the plexiglass. Also, each switch makes a distinct clicking sound which allows you to test the sensitivity of each button without having to run stepmania or any DDR game. If you want to, you can add a second switch for lights, placing it right next to the other switch to keep them in sync with each other (or close enough to not notice a difference) while keeping the circuits separate.

That's the sensor design I use for my pad (here's a pic, excuse the low quality), and it handles like a dream. I've been using it heavily over the past several days and I have no complaints regarding functionality.

tl;dr
1. How do I clean sheet metal and corner braces?
2. Use lever switches as sensors instead of sheet metal, braces, or anything similar to save time, money, and headaches.

slvrshdw · Trick Member Joined: 05 Jan 2005

i use orange clean on mine, but i bet that windex would work actually..

and if i remember right, i think some one else used those switches, but eventually they WILL break, (like after a few millions presses), but it will.

other than that, it sounds like its a great idea; i just use matrix sensors on the few (ok, many) i've built because it is more like the arcade sensor..
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Power Surge · Basic Member Joined: 02 Mar 2007

Did you mean that literally or as a figure of speech? A few million sounds about right.

Consider this: A difficult song on heavy has about 600 steps or so (even more for ITG songs). Let's say you're skilled and in good enough shape to land 10,000 steps in a day before calling it quits (that's at least 10 - 15 songs). Let's say the switches break after 3 million steps total.

3,000,000 / 10,000 = 300 days

That means it would take almost a year for those switches to break, if you have that much endurance and if you play everyday.

Let's say you have an equally skilled friend or sibling using the pad just as much, reducing the time to around 6 months. Realistically, that's roughly equal to 4 moderately skilled players using the pad to play several songs each per day. If that were the case, you'd have to replace the switches every 6 months at the most frequent. In my case, I wouldn't have to worry about that for years to come, and when that day comes, I'm only away by a short drive, $12, and a few minutes with a soldering iron before I'm back to playing. Something like that is so trivial that I wonder why you brought it up in the first place.

tl;dr $12 and a soldering iron every few years.

Also, since the switches are so cheap, you can add more switches to increase sensitivity and fault-tolerance.

As for cleaning sheet metal, I've used Pine-Sol, and it's working but I only had a little bit to work with and I need to get a bucket.

evilkoala · Trick Member Joined: 17 Sep 2004 Location: West Virginia

I've always wondered, is it possible to make a hybrid metal pad that can be used for DDR/PIU. I jsut want a pad that does both games easily.
The only problem that I see is with the wiring of the controller to all 9 areas. Would I have to find some way to switch the panels easily to play Pump, or is there an easier way?

Weston · Trick Member Joined: 17 Feb 2003 Location: Minnesota

What I did was make a plug-in for my pad, then just wire a controller to adapt to it. It's just an ethernet cord and plug, and I can easily use the pad for PS2, Xbox, or whatever as long as the controller for is wired for it.

That's one solution.

slvrshdw · Trick Member Joined: 05 Jan 2005

separate control boxes is going to be the easiest by far

as for making the official arcade style of "arrows" interchangable...i have no idea how some one would pull that off, considering each one is different.
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mikieson · Trick Member Joined: 14 Nov 2003

Its kind of sad how dead these boards are. Im thinking of getting back to playing a little stepmania again. Gonna build another pad so me and my boys can play doubles again like old times....

devout · Trick Member Joined: 15 Dec 2006 Location: the atl

devout · Trick Member Joined: 15 Dec 2006 Location: the atl

ChilliumBromide · Trick Member Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Location: Beaverton, OR

Hey doodz, I'm still alive.

I haven't been posting much because DDRFreak always crashes my browser.

Anyway, I made a working DDR pad lol. I'll get pics and poopy some other time.

I've kind of abandoned DDR for monster hunter, so I haven't had much reason to build pads recently.
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I used to be active here lol

Rubis · Basic Member Joined: 14 Jun 2007

I'm working on a DDR/PUI combo pad. Does anyone have exact dimensions (arcade) for either of them? I know that DDR panels are 11", but I need stuff like bar distance and space between pads for doubles. For pump I need all dimensions.

If this is the wrong place or it has been posted before, I'm sorry. Search doesn't seem to be working.

xerox personality · Posted: Mon May 05, 2008 7:01 pm Post subject:

Rubis · Basic Member Joined: 14 Jun 2007

Thank you Xerox and Kelinmiriel for the detailed bar dimensions.

A friend of mine has a pipe bender that she said I could use for the bar. I'm planning on using 1.5" electrical conduit and compression couplers to make it removable.

I remember seeing somewhere that the doubles spacing is ~1.5", someone correct me if I'm wrong. I still need Pump It Up panel dimensions. I know that the corners are not square, but I'm hoping they are 11" wide.

DARREN HAYEZ · Trick Member Joined: 13 Apr 2006 Location: Michigan

Ooh, thanks for the dimensions! I need to build a bar for my Afterburner, and I was wondering what the dimensions were.
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Szalkow · Trick Member Joined: 09 May 2008

Not sure how many people are still around to help with questions, but I might as well ask here.

I'm planning to build a pad that will be compatible with PC USB, with PlayStation functionality being optional. Is it easiest to wire a PlayStation controller and then buy a PSX-USB adapter for it, or is there some way to wire the pad to a USB cable?

I have a couple of PC-and-PSX dual-compatible soft pads that work great, but I'm not really interested in cannibalizing them...