Hey guys! This thread is where I'll start a "How To Build A Control Box* For My Metal Dance Pad To Work On The PC"
As with any DIY, I am not responsible for any damages or wasted money you may encounter during this process.
I'm sure this tutorial isn't the first of its kind, but I haven't seen one on this forum yet. I'm here to share my knowledge and ideas and to help everyone else enjoy stepmania with their dance pad. The primary goal here is a quick, cheap and solderless path to making your metal dance pad work with your PC without it looking pretty. The bare minimum, the more effort you want to put in, the more expensive it will get. The more features you want, the more expensive it will get. You get the point.
Solderless you say?! Yes! The only tools you'll need are:
Multimeter - To find out what wires are what
Screwdriver - For the screw terminals
Wire stripper - Or equivalent, needed to expose the wires needed
Still with me? Good!
Step 1 -
Identify what D-Sub connector your metal pad uses. Check the plug on your dance pad and see if it has 9 or 15 pins, and if its male or female. See the first post here: http://www.stepmania.com/forums/input-adapters-and-controllers/show/2097
Using that as our example, its a D-Sub 15 pin female connection.
Step 2 -
Now go to amazon or ebay and look up listings for D-Sub 15 pin 3 row MALE (<- important) breakout boards. Buy whichever, just make sure it looks like it will plug into your dance pad's plug. If you have a 9 pin, search the 9 pin one.
Use ebay to search for a zero delay encoder board. These are normally $10 give or take. Buy it now!
Step 3 -
Once everything is shipped, now its time to get serious! Plug the breakout board into your dance pad and use the multimeter to find out your common ground wire and which wires are your arrows. I'll make another post on how to do that in detail. For now, we'll use the pinouts for the dance pads I happen to own:
8 Arrow Pinout
2- Up Left
3- Ground for 2 and 4
4- Up Right
5- Down Right
9- Down Left
11- Right
12- Left
13- Down
14- Up
15- Ground
6 Arrow Pinout
5- Ground
7- Up
8- Down
9- Left
10- Right
14- Up Right
15- Up left
Once, again if you have another metal dance pad with different pinout, feel free to reply here so the rest of us can use that info. I'll also update this portion as well. Unfortunately I do not have any pinout info on 9 pin connector pads.
Step 4 -
Grab your zero delay encoder and a couple of the wire connectors. Since this is the bare minimum tutorial, you'll only need 4 pairs. [If you want 6 arrows, then use 6. 8? then 8.] Plug those into the bottom row of the board. This board is common ground so we can cut the extra wires from the connectors here. In the picture the white wires are ground. We only need 1, so cut all the other ones out. Afterwards snip off the ends of the quick disconnects from the blue wire and have some of the wire exposed, about 1/8" If you use the red/black wire pair. The red wire would be cut away.
Step 5 -
Now that you have your 5 wires ready to go, take your breakout board and start hooking up the wires. In this case I will be looking for where pins 11-15 are. The most important part here is hooking the ground wire to the correct pin., which is 15 here. After that just hook up the other 4 wires to the other 4 pins. The direction does not matter, you will configure that in stepmania anyways.
Take the screwdriver you have and loosen the screw terminal, stick the wire in the gap and then tighten down, rinse and repeat.
Step 6 -
Get the usb cable supplied and plug that into the encoder board. You can also plug in your dance pad again now.
Step 7 -
Plug it in to your computer! The led light should be lit. The drivers should have automatically installed and when you test them out buttons 1-4 should work.**
And there you have it! A bare minimum, no soldering needed replacement box* that works for PC for roughly $20.
*There's no box...
** I've tested this setup a couple of times and it would randomly drop notes, probably due to static buildup or something like that. I added a ferrite core to the wires between the zero delay and breakout board and it seemed to have helped.
Video of results:
EXTRA STAGE!
Spoiler (click to view)
Since you've made it this far, maybe the DIY bug has bit ya and you want something more flashy. I do recommend if you don't know how to solder, go learn how to do it! It's not too hard to learn and the possibilities are endless after that.
This is the part of the tutorial where more money/time/skill is involved. I won't go into complete detail, this part is just to give you some ideas.
Of course the bare minimum result looks janky, it'll need an enclosure of some sort.
Stuff you can use without much effort:
DVD/PS2 game case
Money:
Project box
DIY box:
Tools needed
Rotary tool - used to cut the holes for the wires and connector
Hot glue gun/double sided tape - to secure the board to the box
Optional
Push buttons - For Back and Start on the box itself, can find at Radio Shack. Look for normally open buttons
Soldering Iron - used to solder the wires from the board to the push buttons mentioned previously
Here I bought a project box that was similar size to the original control box for the dance pad. I drilled out 2 holes for the buttons and used the rotary tool to cut out the space for the connector to stick out. You do need to solder the wires to these buttons to make sure they don't disconnect. That's why this wasn't included in the main tutorial.
As with any DIY, I am not responsible for any damages or wasted money you may encounter during this process.
I'm sure this tutorial isn't the first of its kind, but I haven't seen one on this forum yet. I'm here to share my knowledge and ideas and to help everyone else enjoy stepmania with their dance pad. The primary goal here is a quick, cheap and solderless path to making your metal dance pad work with your PC without it looking pretty. The bare minimum, the more effort you want to put in, the more expensive it will get. The more features you want, the more expensive it will get. You get the point.
Solderless you say?! Yes! The only tools you'll need are:
Multimeter - To find out what wires are what
Screwdriver - For the screw terminals
Wire stripper - Or equivalent, needed to expose the wires needed
Still with me? Good!
Step 1 -
Identify what D-Sub connector your metal pad uses. Check the plug on your dance pad and see if it has 9 or 15 pins, and if its male or female. See the first post here: http://www.stepmania.com/forums/input-adapters-and-controllers/show/2097
Using that as our example, its a D-Sub 15 pin female connection.
Step 2 -
Now go to amazon or ebay and look up listings for D-Sub 15 pin 3 row MALE (<- important) breakout boards. Buy whichever, just make sure it looks like it will plug into your dance pad's plug. If you have a 9 pin, search the 9 pin one.
Use ebay to search for a zero delay encoder board. These are normally $10 give or take. Buy it now!
Step 3 -
Once everything is shipped, now its time to get serious! Plug the breakout board into your dance pad and use the multimeter to find out your common ground wire and which wires are your arrows. I'll make another post on how to do that in detail. For now, we'll use the pinouts for the dance pads I happen to own:
8 Arrow Pinout
2- Up Left
3- Ground for 2 and 4
4- Up Right
5- Down Right
9- Down Left
11- Right
12- Left
13- Down
14- Up
15- Ground
6 Arrow Pinout
5- Ground
7- Up
8- Down
9- Left
10- Right
14- Up Right
15- Up left
Once, again if you have another metal dance pad with different pinout, feel free to reply here so the rest of us can use that info. I'll also update this portion as well. Unfortunately I do not have any pinout info on 9 pin connector pads.
Step 4 -
Grab your zero delay encoder and a couple of the wire connectors. Since this is the bare minimum tutorial, you'll only need 4 pairs. [If you want 6 arrows, then use 6. 8? then 8.] Plug those into the bottom row of the board. This board is common ground so we can cut the extra wires from the connectors here. In the picture the white wires are ground. We only need 1, so cut all the other ones out. Afterwards snip off the ends of the quick disconnects from the blue wire and have some of the wire exposed, about 1/8" If you use the red/black wire pair. The red wire would be cut away.
Step 5 -
Now that you have your 5 wires ready to go, take your breakout board and start hooking up the wires. In this case I will be looking for where pins 11-15 are. The most important part here is hooking the ground wire to the correct pin., which is 15 here. After that just hook up the other 4 wires to the other 4 pins. The direction does not matter, you will configure that in stepmania anyways.
Take the screwdriver you have and loosen the screw terminal, stick the wire in the gap and then tighten down, rinse and repeat.
Step 6 -
Get the usb cable supplied and plug that into the encoder board. You can also plug in your dance pad again now.
Step 7 -
Plug it in to your computer! The led light should be lit. The drivers should have automatically installed and when you test them out buttons 1-4 should work.**
And there you have it! A bare minimum, no soldering needed replacement box* that works for PC for roughly $20.
*There's no box...
** I've tested this setup a couple of times and it would randomly drop notes, probably due to static buildup or something like that. I added a ferrite core to the wires between the zero delay and breakout board and it seemed to have helped.
Video of results:
EXTRA STAGE!
Spoiler (click to view)
Since you've made it this far, maybe the DIY bug has bit ya and you want something more flashy. I do recommend if you don't know how to solder, go learn how to do it! It's not too hard to learn and the possibilities are endless after that.
This is the part of the tutorial where more money/time/skill is involved. I won't go into complete detail, this part is just to give you some ideas.
Of course the bare minimum result looks janky, it'll need an enclosure of some sort.
Stuff you can use without much effort:
DVD/PS2 game case
Money:
Project box
DIY box:
Tools needed
Rotary tool - used to cut the holes for the wires and connector
Hot glue gun/double sided tape - to secure the board to the box
Optional
Push buttons - For Back and Start on the box itself, can find at Radio Shack. Look for normally open buttons
Soldering Iron - used to solder the wires from the board to the push buttons mentioned previously
Here I bought a project box that was similar size to the original control box for the dance pad. I drilled out 2 holes for the buttons and used the rotary tool to cut out the space for the connector to stick out. You do need to solder the wires to these buttons to make sure they don't disconnect. That's why this wasn't included in the main tutorial.
Last edited: 6 January 2016 6:46pm
