Wooden Pad

[squeakypants]

Would you buy a wooden pad? Since the homemade metal pad isn't really metal, I figured "Why spend money on unneccessary sheet metal?" I'm designing a wooden pad (the buttons themselves may or may not be wooden, and if they are they'll be laminate or somethings so that it won't splinter).

I'm thinking of selling them, since I can sell them for less than the name brand ones. If you don't have a metal pad and you go on ebay and see this, would you buy it?

[jamygabb]

i would, but only if it is very sturdy and less than$100. And also it would be nice if they had the pads for Xbox ps2 and gamecube.

[squeakypants]

I'm going to try to get the price to actually make it down to 50$-75$ per pad, that way I can sell them for 75$-100$ each. However, with the price of shipping it will probably add $50 :-/ I'll look in to it, but I know USPS will make the shipping around 60-70$.

The design I created is much more sturdy than it needs to be, so you shouldn't have to worry about that I'm also thinking about warranties, so that if something does go wrong, I can fix it for you, though I wouldn't pay for shipping (like I said, expensive). The only problem I'm working out with the design is wiring. Just the path of how I'll get it from the buttons to the controller (or vice versa).

I can't make it for all three at once like the redoctane ignition2.0 if that's what you mean, but if I can find cheap controllers for each console then I shouldn't have a problem. I could do dreamcast if you want PC I'm not really sure how to, though.

[Edible Bondage Tape]

the wiring sught to be easy to do


and if you really want to do a PC native one the easyes way is just to use an old keyboard like a controller
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[squeakypants]

How many games require (not including start and select):

4 buttons: Up Down Left Right
5 buttons: Up Down Left Right Center
8 Buttons: Up Down Left Right & Corners
9 Buttons: Up Down Left Right Center & Corners

How much would this effect sales? What button on a normal PS controller is center?


A little off topic, but is there any way to cancel out of a menu but not restart the game w/o the Triangle button? Also, how do you select songs w/o the X button, like Riptide's pad? Do you just have to go down and hit start, cause that would be a pain, and if I sold them like that people would probably just kick the start button and that would mean broken buttons, which would mean negative feedback and/or many repairs.

[squeakypants]

Would it be possible to use wood as the buttons? Would the piece of metal on the bottom of the buttons make them go on fire? Obviously not a good thing.

"My new wooden pad is here. Let's try it out. I'll press X. HOLY CRAP MY FOOT'S ON FIRE!"

[k//eternal]

The world would be a very interesting place if every time you touched wood with metal, it caught on fire.
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do the right thing... trust yourself, and you'll know the way

[naturally untalented]

hehe all hell would break loose, wooden pad sounds awesome... But I'm pretty happy as it is... Oh well, maybe in the future...

[Biduleman]

[squeakypants]

I'm saying if i glue the sheet metal (for the sensors) to wood, then run an electrical current through the metal (cause, for all intensive purposes, that's all you are doing), would that heat up the wood enough to make it catch fire?

Also, if you are going to buy a hard pad/cobalt flux, would you not get one that doesn't have corner buttons?

[eepiccolo]

[jamygabb]

i'm just saying in my first message that you should have pads for separate systems.

[Wakka Lakka]

Most so-called 'metal' pads are actually just wooden pads covered with metal. The afterburner is built out of wood, so is the TX series. The CF pads use a dense material called melamine (sp). The only true 'metal' pads I know of are the real arcade pad, and homebuilt ones.

[iwrestledamudkiponce]

[XenoX101]

[Master_Nabo]

They sure look nice, a while back stupidbarber finished one here.

It looks awesome, costs a bit less, and is very unique.

Me and my friend did the numbers and found out that it would be nearly impossible for us to go into business making these pads, unless we had a good sum of money to start out with. But if you got the time, money and a large place to build them, go for it.

[slvrshdw]

well about that one..

that really is about like every other homemade "metal" pad..
there just isnt any sheet metal/flashing covering those squares, its varnish..

and i still want to make my REAL metal only pad, but then thatd cost so much oh well i guess i wont
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[FreakyDDR]

who says u have to spend so much on making a pad, just take stuff from building sites. Thats wat im doing

[stupidbarber]

(Oh, not cool to steal, please say you were kidding)

Yeah, as Nabo said, I made two wood pads. Basically just left off the sheet metal covering, to save time, money. But I'm afraid they still cost me more than 75 - 100. I'd say closer to $150 - 175 each. But that was including the lexan for panels, and substantial sheet metal for the electrical contacts. If you went up in scale, you could likely cut the costs a bit. But if you include the costs of the adapters or control boxes, i still think you would be hard pressed to make a profit at 75 - 100. Still, if it's a durable pad with good response, people should be willing to pay at least 150. It would likely still be better than an Afterburner judging from many of the comments in that thread. Reliability is the key.