Can I fix my own Metal Dance Pad?

January 20, 2006 10:28 AM

Can I fix my own Metal Dance Pad?

I bought this dance pad off Innex Inc. The photos are of the connector between the dance pad and the control box. As far as I know, it looks to be 15 pin, high density (3 lines), male. It LOOKS exactly like a VGA connector, but it's connecting to a control box.


The OUTSIDE wires have came off because the plastic cover for the plug was never properly welded to the cord, but simply clipped ONTO the cord. In other words, the plug would turn as soon as you pull it out of the bag and as the cord inside stay in the same orientation, it would twist off the soldering.

I've emailed the company a week ago to ask for a connection diagram and they haven't sent me anything yet, and I'm going to attempt to fix it myself. If I need to open a pad up and rewire it, I would. I'm not squeamish. But the thing is:

-I don't know which wire goes where on the pins, in the soldering process.
-I wouldn't know which cable to buy, if I'm going to rewire the pad myself.

So if anyone has had experience doing this themselves (to a generic pad) then, please help...

posted by Sallysings to technology (2 comments total)

So I'm assuming that by "control box", you mean some proprietary control box that came with the dance pad and that has another cable connecting the box to your computer/console?

I think your best chance at figuring out what goes where is trial and error. It looks like you have 4 or 5 wires that have come loose. Get a corresponding number of mini-clip jumper wires, and make some best guesses (based on position) on what goes where. Fire up the system and see if it works. If it doesn't, switch some of the leads around.

I'd be really surprised if you could fry anything by making the wrong connections, but no guarantees....
posted by mr_roboto at 11:23 AM on January 20, 2006

I've cannibalized a pair of xbox soft pads to make a cbox for my cobalt fluxes, which is probably more similar than anything most people here have done.

The deal is that one pin goes to all switches, and other pins connect to the other side of each switch. You should be able to figure out which is which either by opening up the pad or just with a multimeter. Also map out which switches go where. This won't tell you which color wire should go there, but you should be able to figure that out by trial and error.

Plug your cbox into your xbox or ps2 or whatever, and try just shorting the loose wires to that one common-to-all-switches pin and see which button it thinks it is.

The votage will be 5v, so you're not going to hurt yourself. The controlbox is expecting these circuits to be closed, so you're not gonna damage it either. Just poke around.

Also keep in mind that probably no more than 12 of the pins are actually used (depending on whether the center square has a sensor, and select and start are on the pad it could be as few as 9) - a bunch of the ones hanging off might be that way straight out of the factory.

Good luck, and please document and publish any pinouts you discover so that other people can gain the beneifit of your experimentation!
posted by aubilenon at 11:36 AM on January 20, 2006