DDR

This page summarizes how Binky and I created a Dance Dance Revolution controller that rivals the excellent Konami Deluxe pads, nearly from scratch, and certainly for far less money. The problem with the Deluxe pads is that they are extremely hard to find, which makes them typically very expensive when you DO find one. This leaves most people with the very thin and fairly crappy pads, which suffer from a host of problems.

The basic theory of the pad's operation is very simple. Like any controller, input to the console is indicated by closing a switch between a common lead (the same 'wire' goes to all buttons) and a specific lead which indicates which button was pressed. This part of the controller has been the same all the way back to the Atari 2600. After the switch is closed, on modern controllers, a small circuit converts the input into a format that the game machine can understand.

On a DDR dance pad, the buttons are the areas that you step on with your feet. All pads that I...