p.o.s. ddr game box controller alternative

Ok I'm gonna make this story short and sweet, but I am really frustrated right now haha..

A while back I got a DDR Ion pad from dd game, worked great, then I lost the box and stopped playing for about 2 years.

I buy another replacement box (rip off), and started playing again, only problem is, it seemed it was shorting out.

Now how did I suspect this? Well it would work for a few steps, then just bam no arrow would work for a few seconds and then it started to again.

So I thought maybe the sensors started going bad, and tried the "upgrade" by replacing the foil with galvanized sheet metal, worked somewhat but still shortened out a bit.

So then I started diggin on changing the sensors, tried to the mending brackets with mouse pad in between, no luck at all because with this pad design they didn't work well at all...

So I rebuilt by setting longer thin galvanized mending brackets (6x1/2", 3 that are not branched but are wired) on the bottom and thin small brass ones (2x1/2", 9 connected together, branched and wired) on the arrow pad, both were hooked up separate, similar to original but with modification.

Now it REALLY shortens out, its ridiculous, the sensors are super sensitive and clank a little bit, but they depress better since I added a whole new foam support which made it more stable.

The whole time the only thing stayed constant was that box, and I am not forking over more rip off dollars for another same one that may do the same.


Now that my rant is over, which control box should I look into (I have an old PC controller thats like the ps2 controller) or do I need to find a way to ground the pad, maybe too much electricity thats surging with the zinc/brass metals or do I need to build a custom control box that can handle the current and not overload the usb port?

I'm so frustrated agh.. :(

Edit 4/7

So they way it seems to be shortening out in a different way, 2 arrows will get locked and no other arrow can be pressed for a few seconds (KILLS the life bar, UGH), which seems like the box is overloaded, so there is a really good chance that the box is definitely the problem.

Can't you just build your own control box for the pad?

Topic seems dead but couldnt find any other topic about this

So in order to make my pad to work with windows 8 i bought a game controller and used the controller inside it as a controller for my dancepad. Just had to do some rewiring. Works perfectly except 1 thing. Sometimes it just seems to hang and not register any arrows for a few seconds. Am i too fast for the game controller or something that its buffer is full?

Too fast for the game controller? Unlikely. You realize that people play up to 20 steps a second on dance pads, a good pad should recognize every single step without fail, there is no speed limit stepmania won't crash at that speed or buffer out or whatever.

Static probably builds up and is overloading the USB port. You could add in-line capacitors to help normalize the voltage spikes or make your own control box from a circuit board that has capacitors already built in any good dance pad circuit board would work fine however this problem is actually quite common with metal pads and the design engineers didn't realize static buildup when playing was a thing. Blueshark / Afterburners both suffered from the same problem. Many of the good PS2 soft pads have capacitors in them.

This seems promising for USB devices. Been looking at trying these myself.

https://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html

Sounds like the controller is shorting the USB port and thus activating the protection circuit in the motherboard. I have had this happen a few times due to a bad device. You can try just using the controller without the dance pad and see if it works. What controller are you using?

You would need to add in-line capacitors to deal with the static using the I-Pac, it is not recommended to be used with dance pads. You can ask Ultimarc themselves as well to confirm.