Cobalt Flux

About 5 months ago I went on a trip to Great Yarmouth with the family. We have been doing this as a family since even before I was born. Apparently I was riding the coaster there inside ma mams belly. Nice image. Anyway, 6 months ago I played DDR for the first time in the arcade. Dance Dance Revolution, no I wasn't just sitting down playing with some sticks of ram; waving a dual channel kit wildly in the air like a crazed ram merchant.


you can see me there, third womb on the left...

It was great, ended up pumping £30 into the machine that first time. Well I got home and immediately the next day decided to look for the home alternative. I found a pc "emulator" called stepmania. http://www.stepmania.com/

This program is free, and you can find a lot of support for it. People have created packs of all the arcade versions, even recreating the graphics and menus.

My search then turned to a dance mat solution. Looking around on eBay I found one "metal dance pad" for around £70. Wow, a bargain I thought. It even had a hand rail. Stupidly I made a bid and continued to look around on the net. Within 30 minutes I was desperately trying to retract my bid. Reviews for this thing stated cracked surfaces within hours, broken handles and far worse. I think someone even mentioned an unfortunate incident involving a can of spam...


avoid like the plauge


avoid like a kick in the face


avoid like an oncoming 10 ton lorry

Luckily I was able to retract my bid, but that still left me without a solution. Thoughts of "I'll make my own one" popped into my head. Now while it would be nice to have done this and then proudly boasted with pictures step by step of assembly, this alas is not the happy ending. However it did result in me finding a forum topic leading me to a product called Cobalt Flux.

...Introducing Cobalt flux centre stage

http://www.cobaltflux.com

For around £270 I can get myself a dance pad that uses material found on NASA space ships. Awesome. I think I must have read the information on that page more times then I have fingers and toes. I was um-ing and ar-ing. £270 is a lot to spend on a controller. So eventually I decided not to. Anti climax? No read on.

After a week of playing finger dancing with my keyboard (a pointless exercise) I sort of gave up. It just wasn't the same experience. So here my story should have ended.

Move forward 5 months. Yesterday I visited South end on sea this time (yes my family does seem to visit a lot of sea side towns). I was itching to play some more DDR. "Dance Max 2" I think the machine was called. By the end of the session I must have spent another £30 and realised what I had to do.

I have now purchased a £270 cobalt flux with "arcade mod" from http://positivegaming.com


almost looks sexy...

The device doesn't come with a pc attachment, you either have to buy or make one. My little project will be to make one. My design will have flashing arcade style buttons housed in metal or plastic box. I can't build the whole dance pad, but I’m going to have some fun making this pc "adapter".


something like this

Now, why did I post this here? I don't know. I was bored. Ha ha. Just felt like writing something that might be interesting to read. DDR is great exercise and great fun. I’m sure as like me, the computer lifestyle causes podgy stomachs for a lot of you bedroom coders. DDR is a viable way of giving yourself a good work out. It will also keep you entertained enough to make it more about fun and less about exercise.

So, I'll keep this topic updated if anyone cares as to when I receive the cobalt, and the small build projects that go along with it.

Ta ta.


action shot of me on the right, Oooo impressive! .. (ha ha)

Sure beats the crappy plastic (or whatever it's made out of) pad that came with my sis's copy of DDR Max2 for the PS2....

Should try the thing out in the arcade on the solid pads, will likely provide a more immersive experiance without fear of falling/pad slippage.


But damn, £270? I would have just opted for something more stable and affordable.


How do you go about making your own adapter btw? Was always interested how people do those sort of things, when I usually opt for the pre-built solution....


If you like these music-rhythm kind of games though, I'd recommend taking a look at Guitar Hero for the PS2, it's probably my fav out of the bunch of those type of games currently out there, been playing it since it's release (pre-ordered it ;/), anxiously awaiting it's sequel due this November.

Yeah I did buy a crappy foam mat thing (neglected to put that part in the mini story). It was total crap.

I sort of see the £270 as like buying some exercise equipment. Think of the cost of a decent exercise bike or rowing machine. Sure you can opt for a cheaper version but it does always turn out better in the long run if you pay that little bit extra.

I think because I had already wasted £60 in the arcades contributed to me investing in this. Also there was not one single bad review out of alot that I read. Probably all bar one of the reviews gave the pad 100/100, 10/10, 5/5 or 100%.

Without that I don't think I would have been inclined to go for it.

Well I converted a dreamcast arcade stick to usb few years ago. Same thing at the time, all the alternative arcade sticks for the pc were rubish or just not suitable. The dreamcast one has the sega style arcade joystick and buttons.

Anyway yeah. It involved getting one dreamcast stick (duh) and one cheap pc gamepad. Ripping the circuit out of the gamepad. Soldering points from the dreamcast stick onto points on the pc gamepad. Fitting it all inside the dreamcast stick and plugging into the pc.

The gamepad supplied the USB interface. This means it would be recognised under windows as a game controller.

This new one will use a similar idea but perhaps a little more advanced. I will be constructing my own housing and fitting some LED lit buttons into the unit. You can buy these from maplin. Maybe finishing off with a nice decal print out on the front or something.

So not really electronics, more about transplanting.

Eh?

Are we talking about 'dance mats' and Blitzers dancing to keep in shape?

I suggest Blitzers go out alone and pick on a local gang and let them punch that flabby stomach or yours until it is nice and tight.

What are we - maggots?

I take 5 min breaks from coding every few hour or so and either dance to trance, do push ups, cruches or aikido exercises. Or uh sometimes just lying in the sun.