Question about building/wiring a dance pad to my Mame Cab

[oldskoolcade]

Okay, so I've got my wife interested in my Mame project again by showing her the line of DDR-like games for PC (i.e. stepmania).  So I've been doing some reading and I'm gonna give building a dance pad a shot.  Now almost every setup I've seen so far is designed to interface with a PS2 or XBOX, and that using it for a PC would involve a USB adapter of sorts....my question I pose to you, can I circumvent this conversion by simply wiring my 4 dance arrows to inputs on my Keywiz instead?
If that's possible, the only thing standing in my way (aside from the actual construction), would be - how do I wire this thing?   I mean it was easy with my buttons and joystick (connect one wire to ground, one to the NO connector).  Anyone have any ideas how to wire the pads so that when they're up, no connection - when pressed, it registers a connection.

Thanks gang!

[Bgnome]

if you are running the games through mame, then you can map the controls to whatever you want, including keywiz.  if you are runnning the actual pc games, i am unsure whether they support keyboard inputs.  i have always heard of people connecting psx dance pads via adapters.

to build one from scratch, the trickiest part is to devise a method of detecting a press on one of those buttons.  some folks have actually placed pushbuttons under their panels.  i have heard of others using aluminum strips and springs/foam to support the panels.  there are probably a ton of ideas and writeups out there on the net.

[itismejs]

If you are creating a "hard" pad...as opposed to the soft mats...if would be pretty simple/cheap. Just make yer box and put some microswitch buttons under it.

[crashwg]

FYI it may be cheaper to buy one of the premade hardpads available on the net...

I've already got like $120 into mine and I still don't have lexan nor the artwork for the panels...

[SteveJ34]

I realize this is BYOAC but for a metal pad, I'd sure take a look at:

http://www.redoctane.com

Even their hard foam pads look pretty durable. I have seen the metal pad at Fry's and I think I have seen the hard foam pads at Gamestop to avoid shipping.

My daughter wants a dance pad for xmas and I was considering building one in my history but with this metal pad at 199 its hard to think I could manufacturer something less expensive.

There's a web somewhere that could probably be found via google where someone had fashioned one of these and had pretty good pics and descriptions as to how they went about it. This was before metal pads like the one above became available via retail.

Easiest interface will probably be via PSX-USB adaptor then map the controls to whatever game you are trying to interface with as though it were a joy.

My 2 cents sometimes at least worth its weight in pennies....

[Flinkly]

go to this post in project announcements to see what other BYOAC guys are up to regarding dance pads.  looks like he bought a hard pad and reworked it to fit with his cab theme, no idea how he hooked it up or what he's running.  hope this helps.

http://www.arcadecontrols.org/yabbse/index.php?board=10;action=display;threadid=25503

[bionicbadger]

I built the metal pad using the plans from http://www.geocities.com/ddrhomepad/ (popups).

You don't need to hack a ps2 controller if you have a MAME cab using an IPAC or something similar.

What I did was put an RJ45 (standard ethernet) jack on both the dance pad and the MAME cabinet (on the kickplate at the bottom) and connected them using a network cable.  This made it easy to unplug an put away when not in use.  You just wire the contacts for each arrow directly to the RJ45 jack and bypass the PS2 controller crap.  Then on your MAME cabinet, wire the RJ45 jack to your IPAC/joystick inputs, up/down/left/right etc.  Simple.  You can even play pac man and stuff on your dance pad

[oldskoolcade]

Thanks for the suggestions folks!   I looked at some of those soft pad options, but after seeing Riptide's videos on how to make a hard pad, I was sold.  My biggest thing was the whole wiring issue.  It sounds like I can just wire it up like a joystick to my keywiz (once built),.

Cheers!