Remember all the Kraft dance pad posts we kicked off? The hacking has begun! – “Here’s how to change the button mapping so that the Kraft dance pad will work with other dance pad games such as [the open source, free] Stepmania.” Link.
16 thoughts on “$10 Kraft dance pad hacking”
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Under OS X, the Kraft dance pad required no hardware hacking. It works just fine with Stepmania straight out of the box.
Stepmania, on the other hand, wants to write its preferences in a file beside the application, which is a pain if you care about security, but it is trivial to set the protections of the owning folder once, so you can save the state.
I admit, I posted before I’d thoroughly read the original posting, but I don’t remember any problem with simultaneous opposite presses when I tried the dance pad with Stepmania. Even if it does have that problem, isn’t it easier to just twist the pad by 45 degrees?
I admit, I posted before I’d thoroughly read the original posting, but I don’t remember any problem with simultaneous opposite presses when I tried the dance pad with Stepmania. Even if it does have that problem, isn’t it easier to just twist the pad by 45 degrees?
It should be easy to make this mod reversable or operable via a switch, but why did they cut that jumper?
We’re swapping 2 pairs of traces, so 4 traces need to be cut. I cut 3, and then cut the jumper for the 4th. It was easier and cleaner than cutting that particular trace. The jumper is a crossover of the trace route connecting chip to pad, and easier to cut than the trace areas after the crossover.
Yes, it would be reversible with a pair of DPDT switches.
The pad definitely has the orthagonal simultaneous press problem in stepmania *under windows* (left+right and up+down)…and that’s the point of the mod. ;) In windows, the U/D/L/R pads are mapped to the 4-directional “hat” joystick, which is presumed to not support U+D / L+R. It’s a common problem for dancepad / joystick mappings.
Rotating the pad 45 would work, but the distance between the opposing pads is increased by x1.4…basic geom. The distance between the center of the left & right pads is ~20″, but the distance between the diagonals is about 32″, which might be awkward, esp if you’re short. And in the heat of action, jumping around on a lightweight slick plastic mat, I prefer NOT to overextend my legs that way. Easy to slip and do the splits. Ouch. :)
Personally, I use a heavy metal pad for stepmania, but someone asked me how to mod the kraft pad, so I did it for their edification.
And actually I had to do the same mod to the metal dance pad’s controller to get it work…until I learned you could change it’s button mapping by holding UP+SELECT+START for 3 seconds. So I undid the mod. ;P
But that U+S+S trick doesn’t work on the kraft pad, unfortunately.
When soldering those criss-crossing wires on, I accidentally soldered one directly to the surface mount component. I thought that would be it for the dance pad, but apparently it’s not a big deal.
This mod was a big aid to my recovery from the trauma of recent failures.
$10 Kraft dance pad hacking. Fig3 Big Remember all the Kraft dance pad posts we kicked off? The hacking has begun!