Note: Please link to http://royconejo.host.sk and not to this page directly. 

Thanks to: El Pibe Cantina for translating this tutorial to English.

This page is under construction, the images will be translated soon ^_^

> PISO-PAD 1 FEATURES: (^)

• High resistance
• Fast Response
• Stuck to the floor
• Attractive
• Decorative
• Novel design
• High tecnology (Just say NO to wooden pads and crappy mats)
• Easy construction
• Economic
• The pad of the 21st century! "solid-state" pad! 

• Aluminium Foil Tape 5 cm wide x 9 meters long (~USD 3.45)
• Painter's Masking Tape to mark the floor & secure cables (~USD 0.70)
• 6 meters of 4 Pair UTP Cable (used for 10BaseT "common" LANs) (~USD x meter?) OR telephone cable (not yours, though) x 27 feet.
• DB15 Male connector (to be plugged on the joystick port generally found on the sound board (~0.50 USD)
• Two 10k ohms resistors (~0.02 each one?? 0_o)

> TOOLS: (^)

• Soldering iron and Tin
• Scissors or something sharp =P

> INSTRUCTIONS: (^)

We are going to begin with the complicated thing; take the DB15 and take a look at it carefully….on its back you’ll see a total of 15 Pins (8 up, 7 down), each one has a number. If you bought the 27 feet telephone cable you should cut it in 3 equal segments x 9 feet (27/3=9), if you bought a UTP cable or similar don’t worry about it. Take one end of the UTP cable (or the 3 telephone cables) cut off a little bit of the rubber… and you’ll see many little cables inside, you are gonna peel off 5 different cables and weld each one with its respective number: 2,4,7,10,14. if you use the UTP cable this will be easy otherwise if you use the telephone cable you will have to be careful because it only has 2 different colors and it’s gonna be hard to recognize, anyways it’s just an esthetic problem. OK, now take the 10k ohms resistors:

1. Weld one end of the resistor to the Pin #1, and the other end to the Pin #3. 
2. Then, take the other resistor and weld it to the Pin #1 and the other end to the Pin #6. (Warning: the resistors should not make any contact but should be weld together in the Pin #1)

When you are finished it should look like this.

Now you are ready to hook it up to the PC and see what happens…. now on windows, go to “My PC”->“Control Panel”->“Game Controllers”. Here we have to click on “Add” and choose “4-button Gamepad”. After installing the driver it will appear listed with its status on the right (not connected).. if we connect the DB15 connector we just made to the joystick port it should change its “status” to OK, if this happened Windows has recognized our ‘joystick’ and we can keep on, but if not check the cables and welds, especially the resistors’ position.

Now is the moment to prepare the surface where the pad is sticked, this has to be smooth and flat so the tape doesn’t wear off, and at least 40 in X 40 in. The DDR (dance dance revolution) videogame pad is composed by 9 panels of almost 12 in X 12 in, where 4 of them (the arrows) turn on when you step on it:

Now we have to draw the 4 arrows on the selected surface like I show you here with tape, once you have done it you’ve got to tape each contact to the panel. Take the aluminum tape and cut it into long strips of 0.4 in x 40 in. These strips will be used as I show you here. If you watch carefully, you’ll see that the long aluminum strips make 2 “tracks” that never touch, but there are put up so it’s easy for you to step on it and make them touch with a 3rd aluminum strip attached to your shoe!!!!. If you put lots of aluminum tape on your shoe and put the 2 “tracks” closer everything would work better and will be more sensitive. You should stick firmly on the surface we chose 4 pairs of 2 “tracks. A pair for each panel on our pad on this way:

Note that the way I made the “tracks” work well but after trying others I would recommend you use the one named (2), since they’re easy to make, they’re closer from each other and we would use less effort..(This is the design you’ll see in the Cables’ diagram). You must be cautious with each unification of the aluminum strips, they need to transmit the Joystick’s electricity but the glued part of the aluminum tape doesn’t let electricity pass through… in other words you can’t tape a strip over the other, to make it work you’ve got 2 solutions.

When you have finish with it, take the DB15 connector (the one we made before) and be aware on what cables are these pins #: 2, 4, 7, 10, 14 connected. If you used the UTP cable, you just have to take a look at the colors, but if used the telephone cable, you should follow each cable until the end, and then stick tape with its number on it. We should attach the correct cables to each end of each “track” that make the pad, so I invite you to follow these instructions:

When we finished, it’s time to put the device to work. On “windows” go to the place where we have installed the driver for the joystick (My PC->Control Panel->Game Controllers), select it and click on properties, here you can test the response and operation of your Pad (of course you first have to put tape on your shoes to step on the "panels", and remember: more tape on your shoes = better)

You can use this pad on every game on your pc, not just dance games. Any application will recognize the joystick and will use the 4 buttons without any problem. For more information about how to get DDR emulators and songs please go to the “Downloads” section. 



Felicitacions!!!

You have finally finished this tutorial. Be welcomed to the wonderful and exclusive Dance Games world because “YOU” are the happy proprietor of this revolutionary and original PISO-PAD! 

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