DDRTapePad - Cheap, light, easy to build homemade DDR

I'm not quite sure what you mean - using Lexan for the base? The arrows? The entire top surface? And what do you mean about no foam? Something must create a compressible air gap in order to make a mechanical switch...

Also, the thin athletic foam really won't wear out if it's put in properly. This is due to the fact that there is no sideways sliding/sheering force on the foam at all since the Duralar which presses on it is firmly secured.


I never took any videos of it and to my knowledge nobody else has built one, at least none who have posted or PM'd me about it.

As far as fast songs, I'm only a solid 6 skill level so I probably can't do what you would call fast, but I can tell you that if I tap my foot as fast as I can on an arrow and watch Stepmania's input test it picks up every hit and there is no delay in getting off of the buttons. The downside is the buttons are very sensitive because the foam is so thin so any weight at all sets it off unless you are making only a *tiny* amount of contact and it isn't between the foam strips where the metal/metal contact is made. So if you double tap but you don't actually take your foot completely off the arrow it will look like a hold, whereas a less sensitive pad would probably not detect the minor (very low force) contact.

I only built one pad and it is holding up fine though it probably only has about 40 hours of play on. I actually don't use it as my main pad, I only did at first after I built it. Before I finished it I actually bought one of the commercial Impact Arcade pads from MotionFitness so I'd have something reliable to play on (and I've already gone through a set of the ddrgame.com style metal pads and they are shit) and I actually love it, so that's what I usually play on. I still wanted to finish the tape pad though because it's been a hobby off-and-on for years to find the best cheap/light/easy-to-build design, so I wanted to see it through.

For a while I left the tape pad on the floor just so my wife and I and our dogs would walk over it a lot, so that's not really play time but it's an attempt at causing wear. As far as I can tell it's still fine.

Right now I am waiting for a minor knee injury to get better, but once I am playing DDR again (been off about 2 months) I will make a video of me playing on the tape pad. I'm very used to the recessed arrows of the Impact Arcade now though, and I also wish I had made the tape pad arrows larger. I guess I could expand them easily enough...yeah I'll probably do that.


In case anyone is interested....

I mentioned before that I tried to add dense foam on all of the non-arrow squares to create a recessed-arrow feel. That was unsuccessful. While playing, I could not feel the raised areas at all even without socks on, it just wasn't enough of a difference. If I stand still and feel around the arrows felt a little recessed but it was worthless while playing.

If the dense foam was any thicker/higher then there would be too much flexing of the Duralar going on so it would probably stretch/crinkle/tear eventually - the goal is no flexing at all but it can handle some without showing wear.

Also, I ended up switching the perimeter tape from the blue painter's tape to 1 inch black gaffer's tape. This was because at the time (many months ago) I was concerned about the painter's tape drying out. Well the other painter's tape around the Select/Start is still fine after around 6 months so I guess my concern was unwarranted. Still though, the gaffer's tape looks much more presentable - very nice actually, so I think I'm going to replace the rest of the painter's tape with it.

I just started building today. My copper foil tape hasn't arrived yet, but I measured all the squares and taped cold weather foil tape to the hardboard. I got a sheet of 1/32" Makrolon (polycarbonate) to use on top. I also just decided to purchase 1/16" polyethylene foam sheet with an adhesive back. I am going to cut out the 4 arrow squares. I am hoping this gap with be enough to have no prewrap between the two foil squares. The switches will close due to bending. I am also trying to figure out a way where I can have decals showing through the Makrolon. I also agree with using a stronger tape or adhesive. But I will be using blue tape while I test my ideas.

Sounds interesting, how flexible is the top plastic though? If it is anything like 1/32" lexan it's fairly stiff and I suspect that you'll probably end up setting off 2 arrows too easily, for example the upper right corner of the left-arrow will end up firing the up-arrow as well.


Also if you're talking about the foam I think you are (similar to poster mounting foam tape), I tried that before and it does not compress flat enough to get contact. You'd have to just use it around the arrow permiters and rely on the top layer flexing down to make contact toward the center, but then it will take a LOT of force to get an arrow to be recognized when pressing toward the arrow perimeter.

The 1/32" Makrolon is pretty flexible. I thought about it and canceled the foam order shortly after I posted my last post. I considered what you said about the pre-wrap. I'm going to try using just prewrap between the aluminum to see how well it works. I also designed graphics in photoshop and ordered them to be printed at officemax, but I just went there and told me they couldn't print 37x35" even though their website said they could. I haven't worked on much, i've been waiting for my copper tape to come from turkey (lol) it will be here tomorrow. I also need to figure out my controller, it seems the d-pad doesn't allow two buttons pressed at once. the other 4 buttons on the right will work just fine, but i was hoping to somehow do two pads on one circuit through one usb cord if possible.

This is definitely a learning process, now I have to find some place that will print 37x35"

I bought a 12"x12" sample sheet of 1/32" Makrolon just to see what it is like, and wow I think it just might work but it is about 30x more expensive than 3 feet of Duralar, though only about 3x as expensive as an entire Duralar roll if you have no other use for the rest of the roll. When you step on a far corner of an arrow that is diagonally adjacent to another arrow I think there is a good probability of firing both arrows but that's not a big deal. The feel of the top surface will be pretty nice.

I have the hardboard and polycarbonate set up to test foam designs. Everything on the hardboard is final. On my polycarbonate, i have aluminum foil squares taped on with blue tape to the thin layer that protects the polycarbonate (I wasn't ready to place all my nicely cut aluminum tape on there) for testing purposes.

Then I had a better idea. I bought the Duralar and it shipped fast. I also finally found an officemax to print my photoshop design on 35x37" paper and they are shipping it to my house on monday.

This may be useful for your build as well. I am going to build my pad like yours with duralar then sandwich the graphics between the polycarbonate.

So hardboard>prewrap>duralar>graphics>polycarbonate. It is going to be sick! I just need to finalize the pre-wrap. I don't know how you do it! How the hell do I cut such little strips of prewrap? I have a ruler and a triangle and a boxcutter. As I cut it bunches up really bad. I would love to know how you did it. Also I tried using double sided tape with a few poorly cut strips. after I placed few down I watched them all unstick after about 20 secs or so. The double-sided tape was a brand new roll labeled "removable", so that could be one of the problems. also I was cutting 9" strips to stretch to my 10"x10" square. so maybe that's far to stretch. I think that with the weight of the polycarbonate, I might need to come up with a new design. So close yet so far from being done.

By the way, I bought 2 sheets of 1/32" Makrolon custom cut to 35"x37" and it cost about $50 with about $25 shipping (luckily). Took me days of searching to find that price. So far I've spent about $160 on the materials to make two so far, the graphics were $16 shipped for black and white custom 35x37" from special officemax store with a large printer. I hope its good quality lol and they accidentally printed two and only charged me for one!

I had considered that graphics could be added by putting printed stuff between 2 sheets of duralar but the physics simulator in my brain said no. The layers would not be 100% perfectly flat so there is going to be some small amount of waviness and therefore air between the layers. Wherever that air is, the bottom layer will be pushed down a bit and might make contact. You might have the same problem with the polycarbonate top, perhaps worse even. It might work, however, with 2 polycarb layers because they ARE nearly perfectly flat.


Yeah finding a way to work with this stuff was one of the issues I had. This is why I used strips, my early designs were based on cutting a grid of holes in the 3" wide prewrap. That is nearly impossible to do without a snag and then you have to start all over. In the end it was taking over an hour to make a single 11"x3" strip. I actually purchased several different kinds of hole punches, nothing could reliably cut the stuff cleanly. And if you stack multiple layers of it and cut it together, it will cut okay but the layers fuse together at the cut edges and then get stretched and deformed when you pull hard enough to decouple them. In short, it's a pain in the ass.

So that's why I went with strips, and I found a way to cut them easily. You can't use a box cutter, it's not sharp enough. You need a top quality X-acto knife. The Michaels retail chain sells two grades of X-acto knifes, I bought the higher quality one. You can see it in one of the pictures on my imgur album. Then you need a ruler you can cut along that that the knife won't cut into. I used a standard wooden ruler with a metal edge on one side. I used a piece of scrap hardboard as a cutting board. To make the cut, lay the prewrap out and cover the strip you are trying to cut with the ruler and press firmly, then slice it along the ruler edge with the X-acto knife with a good amount of pressure. Works every time.

Also, something to be aware of - polycarbonate plastic is VERY sensitive to heat gradients. Even a slight temperature difference between the top and bottom surfaces will cause it to take on a curved shape, and that curvature might cause unintended electrical contact. The thicker the panel, the more force it exerts, so the 1/32 is probably thin enough that it won't be able to push very hard on the prewrap. But I just wanted to point it out.

Hey, I know this thread is a little old now, but i decided to try out this build.
So far i've done everything, but i'm a bit of a noob and i don't understand how the connection works.
So i soldered my 4 buttons to my xbox ddr pad controller that i ripped from my old softpad.
Where do i solder the top layer to?

The top surface is the common lead, usually the same as ground. If you look at how the original pad you took the board from was wired, there will be one connection that goes to all arrows. That's the one you want.

are there any videos of this pad in action

The other pad is pretty destroyed now, would it be 'GND' on the circuit board? seems to be the bigger one. I'll try to fix it up later today. Thanks heaps

If i get this working today, i might upload something to my youtube. although mine uses different plastic and foam to the original

EDIT: i can only get my up arrow to work. Idk why. Looks like everything should be okay
2nd EDIT: It's mostly fixed now, i think the adhesive in my copper tape is not conductive :/ It just means that i need to make sure it's folded.

Yeah...conductive adhesive is an absolute must for this. Folding may work for a while but eventually the crease will crack and cease to conduct.