Pryankster's DDR Platform

Click picture for full-size image

After dancing on the soft pads for a while with no shoes and discovering that besides the fact that the pads slid around too much, the shock on my poor ol' knees in bare feet on a hardwood floor was too much to bear.

So, I did what any DDR freak would do ... I built my own platform.

My home system is a DreamCast, but I expect to be getting a PlayStation2 in the near future, so the electronics are modular -- the switches from the pad plug into a DB-25 connector which is connected to the cannibalized DC controller. When I get my PS2, It's a simple matter of cannibalizing a PS2 controller and making up another DB25 cable (only about 12 pins are actually used on the db25.

Some pictures:

• The "Big" Picture -- The whole thing. I routed out and glued into place the mounting bracket for the VMU's from the DC controller. Across the top I have the 'select' (konami, 'analog'), 'start', 'B', 'left', 'down', 'up', 'right', and 'a' buttons for menu selection. The main pads press the A, B, X & Y buttons on the controller. The solid white and black plexiglass squares started out clear, but are painted on the back. The arrow graphic was printed on "photo paper" in my Epson Photo 870 printer and taped with electrical tape to the bottom of the button. I'm still searching for a better solution. The black bar on the left edge is a strip of rubber which is used to keep the box from slipping and/or scratching the floor. It's 3 foot wide black "non-slip-strip". The overhang is because I haven't cut it to size yet.
• Closeup of switch block -- each switch block has four microswitches which are mounted on a square of particle board. The particle board is 1/8" shorter than the MDF slats which makes up the frame, this gives the plexiglass enough flex to press the micro swiches (sorry about the blurry picture ... )
• Closeup #1 -- closeup of the VMU socket and the select and start buttons. The switch above the VMU socket was initially to select "menu" or "game" modes, (toggling the left and up panels between 'x'/'dpad-left' and 'y'/'dpad-up' -- I with that DDR would just let the x/y/a/b buttons drive the damn menu cursor.
• Closeup #2 -- closeup of the menu buttons.
• Closeup #3 -- closeup of the "UP" panel. You can see the seem in the arrow graphic, When I print the arrows, I printed them as two 10 x 5 pieces and taped them together, since I can't print a 10x10. piece. This also shows the detail of the beveled corners on the plexiglass.

The panels on this unit are only 10" x 10", whereas a real arcade pad is 11" x 11". I did this initially because when I bought the plexiglass sheet at Home Depot, I could only find a 30"x36" piece for 30 bucks, and didn't feel like buying a second piece just to make the buttons 11x11 (and wasting most of the piece. The plan was to cut that piece into nine 10x10 pieces. Unfortunately, I totally botched the cutting of the plexiglass and decided to just go to TAP plastics and get the panels cut for me. So, I ended up spending the cash in the end anyways ... *SIGH* The smaller panels don't seem to make too much difference, and since I have two small kids, it's actually a bit easier for them to use the platform.

The frame is made up of MDF strips (1x4's) on a 3/8" particle board base. The MDF strips are arranged like a tic-tac-toe board to make the nine squares of the platform. The center square has extra strips of MDF to reinforce it, the bottom corners have a single additional strip of MDF to reinforce them.

Each panel is supported by the MDF strips and four 1x1 hardwood strips which were cut to the exact height of the MDF (the screws in each panel go into the hardwood strips.

The unit has six "active" squares, but if and until I get a version of DDR which requires me to use the up/left and up/right buttons, I've disconnected those switches.

The original design used the same mapping as the DC pads: down -> dpad-down, right -> dpad-right, left -> 'x button', and up to 'y button'. The switch near the VMU toggled into 'menu mode' which restored the left -> dpad-left and up -> dpad-up mapping, but since you can't press up and down or left and right on the dpad at the same time, you had to switch back to 'game' mode to actually play anything but a one-foot song ;-) This became bothersome, so I added the menu buttons across the top. I'll eventually put the toggle switch back in service as an on/off switch for the up/left and up/right panels.

The DC controller that I cannibalized was especially suited to the task. it's an 'InterAct Quantum FighterPad'. The cool thing is that all of the buttons and switches in the pad are connected to the 'main' board of the pad via wires. I just clipped and desoldered the wires and reconnected my own wires. The size of the main board in the controller was also just the right size to attach to the VMU socket, which I cut out of the controller body and glued onto the top control panel.

All internal connections, where possible, were made with 'quick connect' crimp connectors. Not only is the pad built like a brick shithouse, but any of the 24 micro switches under the pads can be easily replaced without soldering.

I used two entire boxes of wood screws putting this bugger together. Thank god for Makita.