Well, this is my Homemade Pop'n Music Arcade Style Controller page. Honestly, this was my first real "build-it-yourself" project. I hope this page will provide a decent tutorial on how to build it, along with pictures of what was going on along the way for reference.
Also, much credit goes out to alpha1337. Without his guide, I would never have even thought it possible that I could tackle such a feat, muchless write my own little guide on how to do it. =) Some of this guide might look a bit familiar, as I share his thoughts on alot of things here.
Materials:
Wico The Source:
9 - 22-0580-x - $89.55 Jumbo Pushbutton (1 red, 2 blue, 2 green, 2 yellow, 2 white)
Mmmm. My sexy Pop'n buttons. Well worth every penny I spent.
Wood:
1 - 12" x 30" X 3/4" (top)
2 - 4" x 30" X 3/4" (front and back side)
2 - 4" x 12" X 3/4" (left and right side)
I had some wood left over from building an entertainment center. It's 3/4" MDF, exactly what I needed. If you don't (which I suspect), I checked at Home Depot and you can get a sheet of 3/4" MDF large enough to build one, probably two controllers for only $21.99.
Note: Home Depot (or at least the one near me) will save you lots of time by cutting the MDF for you... for FREE!! Just make sure to bring the measurements with you! Also, you can use other wood besides MDF, but MDF is sturdy, easy to cut, and very cheap. Did I mention they cut it for free? ;)
Wal-Mart (or any videogame store):
1 - Playstation controller - $4.99 (That's what I paid at Wal-Mart. Buy one anywhere you can but DON'T spend over $20 on one)
The controller disassembled, this PCB here is what you'll be soldering the wires to.
Wire:
I got some kind of thin wire from Radio Shack. Any type of thin wire would work, I'm sure.
Estimated Cost: ~$130-150 (depending on shipping and taxes)
Other tools needed:
Soldering iron (low wattage, 15 should be perfect) with solder
Power drill (for the screws, duh)
Building the Box:
C'mon. Do I need to tell you how to build a box? =P Okay fine... there's tons of ways to do it. I did it by using a recessing drill bit to recess the screw holes some, so they won't be visible on the surface. Then I just drilled screws in. You can also use brackets like in alpha1337's guide, or glue the wood together. Whatever you do, it's still gonna turn out to be a box.
This is what my box looked like after I used painter's putty to fill in the screw holes. This stuff is great if you're gonna use screws like I did. It dries fast and you can sand it down and all just like it's a piece of the box.
Drilling the Holes:
Pain. In. The. Ass.
Getting the spacing right wasn't too bad, I used 5.5" for both the center-to-center button spacing and the center-to-center row spacing. Drilling the holes was another story.
Drilling the button mounting holes was easy at 1" in diameter. But to get the buttons to sit flat in the box (as opposed to sitting over 1/2" above it), I needed to recess ANOTHER hole 3.5" in diameter and about 1/2" in depth. If you're gonna do this, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you use a drill press with a 3.5" recess drill bit. Not only will it save you alot of time, but it'll also make your holes exactly 3.5"; mine are a bit oval-shaped because we had to draw circles around where the button sits, then manually use a router with the bit set to 1/2" depth and cut the recessed holes from the middle outward. Needless to say, it sucked.
Also, after you drill your 3.5" holes for the buttons, make sure you cut out little notches on opposite sides of each holes. There are small tabs on the buttons that need those notches to sit flat.
Finishing Up the Box:
This part was fun. If you're using MDF and have access to an orbital sander, by all means use it! It'll make the MDF smooth without actually sanding the wood down. Mine's so smooth, you can't even really tell it's wood... besides the fact that it's a giant wooden box...
After sanding, I coated the box with a layer of primer and let that dry overnight. Yes, overnight. One thing different with me is that I live in Louisiana and the humidity makes paint take a LOT longer to dry than it really should... not to mention the garage is ridiculously hot, but I digress. The next day, I coated the box with a layer of spray-on "Glossy Finish" white paint. It was oil-based, so again it needed to dry overnight. The next day I put a final layer of white paint on it and let that dry. While that was drying, I moved on to the soldering.
By the way, this is what the box looked like with the holes and notches all cut out, before the final layer of paint.
Soldering:
Okay, so I hadn't soldered anything ever before. But holy crap it's really not that hard. I set up a small table and went to work.
Take your PCB and lay it on the table. The first thing I did was blob solder on the Left, Down and Right contact points. This grounds out those points and makes any game designed to function with a Pop'n Music controller act as one during the menus and all. Better yet, you can even play IIDX using this controller: the right 7 keys act as the keys and the left white and yellow keys act as the scratch.
This is a picture of exactly where you need to solder the wires. Big HUGE thanks goes out to Dave Britten for labelling the needed points, I owe you a ton.
This is what contact point on the PCB you need to solder to each microswitch button. You can basically tell what button is what by doing this: look at the BIG copper contact, and follow the thin trace to a contact point. If it doesn't go anywhere else that's the contact point. If it leads somewhere else, that's the ground (don't worry about that, as we will use the existing solder to solder the ground wire to.)
Okay. Here's what you do to solder the wires. I know this won't be very descriptive and I didn't really take any pictures during the process (being as it was done right after I woke up one morning) but this is as good as I can describe it, so bear with me. On your microswitch, there's gonna be 3 prongs: 2 on the side POKING OUTWARD, and one on the very bottom of the microswitch also POKING OUTWARD. You're gonna solder the ground wire to the BOTTOM prong, and the wire from the PCB to the MIDDLE prong.
The Ground Wires:
For the ground wires, we're going to use a cool technique. What you do is take a small bit of wire, around 5.5" (or less, depending on personal preference) and solder that from one microswitch to the next. Remember, solder the ground wires to the BOTTOM PRONG. Keep doing that until you get to your last button. This one you'll solder your wire from the ground contact on your PCB to in order to make a nice complete circuit to all the buttons. What this technique does is keep you from having 2 wires to go one point on the PCB. Very handy.
The Button Wires:
You're gonna solder your wire from the PCB to the MIDDLE PRONG. This is the "normally closed" prong, which means that when you hit the button, it "opens" that switch and the game recognizes that the button is pressed. If you soldered to the "normally open" prong, the button will be recognized as "pressed" until you actually press it. This one is what you do all kinds of crap to if you wanna add lights to yours but I didn't do that, so I won't provide any help on how to do it because... well, I have no idea how to.
Finishing Touches:
I screwed a thin piece of wood to the bottom of my controller so the wires wouldn't be all sticking out, and for easy access in case something needs to be fixed.
This is the finished product. I think it came out very cool in the end.
That's about it. I hope you guys found this helpful! I had fun making the box and writing this guide.
Contact Information:
If you guys need to contact me about anything pertaining to this guide or making an ASC, feel free to IM me (waynec02) or email me (waynec02 (at) hotmail (dot) com) and I will do my best to get back to you ASAP.
Special Thanks:
My old man - without his knowledge of tools and such, I couldn't have built this. Thanks Dad
alpha1337 - without his guide, I wouldn't have even thought it possible to build my own ASC
Shapermc - for helping me out through TONS of PMs at bemanistyle, and for putting up with my ignorance in this area =P
David Britten - for helping me out alot with the soldering part and other random parts of the process that seem to allude my mind right now
Wico The Source - for selling almost arcade replica Pop'n Jumbo Dome buttons at a VERY reasonable price, and for being so damn quick with the shipping
Bemanistyle - for being helpful with alot of questions I had before building it
Konami - for making what I lovingly refer to as Japanese Crack... in musical form, of course. Without Bemani, I'd be very bored most of the time. Keep it up fellas
That's it. Seriously. Now go build your damn controller. =)
