I've been trying to find a cheap one of these for years and last week it was my lucky day on Craigslist.    Downside is apparently this pad (vortz metal pad) is known to have huge problems and the one I got was only used 3 times and already 4 of the 8 buttons are sticking or randomly going off.

So, my plan is to completely rebuild it into something usable.  I guess this will be my little project thread.

Goals:
Add Lights, Make pad significantly harder, fix sensor issues, convert to usb input, and finally convert to a 9-button pad.

Lights
The surface of this pad is a single sheet of 2mm thick plexiglass with a black backing for the sensor plate stickers, remove the black backing and suddenly I have see-through arrows, white LED's to be installed.

Make pad harder
This thing has a 5mm air gap between the plexi sheet and the sensors (feels like the plexi is going to crack it sags so much).  Not only that the entire base is only a 5/16" piece of wood.  So, planning to add thicker plexi where the pads are (1/4"+)  I've also come up with a way to redesign the sensors so they don't interfere with the lighting system.  Air gap should decrease to 2mm.  Base wooden sheet is being increased to 1/2" thickness or more.

usb
ripping a gamepad apart to do this.  not many (none) soft pad usb controllers support 11 buttons. B, A, X, Y, L, R, U, D, Center, Start, Select



Progress

3/7/2011
I have spent about 6 hours making CAD designs for the new sensors & wood frame.
Ordered LED's and resistors needed to make this work.
Power requirements: 5V @ 2-3A | ~15W maximum



To Do

Lots of stuff