Need some help with a home built metal pad...

[rockergod999]

Heyo. My brother I have been putting together our own metal pad for the last week or two. Today, we finished wiring it finally, and plugged it in for a test.

There seems to be a slight delay in the pad, and you basically have to attempt to "great attack" a bit early in order to pull perfects. One of the arrows (the right one) is occasionaly very delayed (1/4 to 1/2 of a second), rendering it slightly useless altogether.

We were wondering if any of you had this problem, or knew what might cause it. We're using the "ddrhomepad" design and plans. We were thinking maybe we just have a crappy 3rd party controller, or that our two sheet metal contacts for each arrow are too far apart. Any comments or suggestions would be much appreciated. Let us know how your pad is working out, things you think we should try, what kind of controller you used, etc, etc. Much appreciated!
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You're friendly neighbourhood gwailo...

Jon

[Silly Puppy]

Congrats on finishing your pad! Good job! Mine took a while, but it got there...

Anyway, to the question at hand; are you using your pad with a PS2 or, say, StepMania with a PS2->USB Adapter? I ask this because I had the same problem when using the pad with an adapter, but not with the PS2. Ends up that there's a setting in StepMania you can change to fix this, but if it's acting this way when playing using a PS2, I don't know what to tell ya...
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Left-Left-Right-Up-Down-Thud-Ouch!

[Ikonomi]

Yeah, if you're using a USB adapter, that's the most likely cause of the delay. If you are using an adapter, I suggest hooking up a normal controller and seeing if there's a delay. That's the easiest way to test.

If you're talking about the PS2, then you could always try taking a panel or two off and testing the response by shorting two contacts with a screwdriver or something along those lines. If you get instant response from that, then you know it's your panel contacts that are causing the problem. There are suggestions on how to increase sensitivity for ddrhomepad's design in the metal pad thread.

If you can get consistent perfects by hitting the arrows early, and you're using a USB adapter, then I'd say the problem is the adapter. It might be compounded by a bad circuit on the right arrow. If you are playing on a PS2, or if your adapter turns out not to be causing a problem, then test the contacts and modify your panels accordingly.
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"There's nothing amazing, just the norm..."

[TheKornKid]

Congrats on the metal pad, my friend and i just finished my DDR metal pad not too long ago.

This is just a thought, but maybe you used too much padding/weatherstripping between the contacts and that's causing the delay. We had the opposite problem, we didn't use enough padding and every arrow got stuck down. After using 2 layers of weatherstripping it works/feels exactly like the arcade. Again it's just a thought, maybe theres too much padding or maybe the contacts are too low in comparison to the contacts on the plexiglass/lexan. If you could add some pictures it would really help in identifying the problem. Good luck and I hope this helped.