My friend Alex had a pathetic old plastic DDR mat and he'd found a tutorial online to convert it into a full solid DDR pad, so we decided to give it a try!

Took us about a full afternoon to build from start to finish, and we had a blast doing so. The buttons are made using tinfoil, sheet metal and a chunk of wood. The tinfoil is glued onto the board, with the corners elevated using strips of cardboard / masking tape. When pressure is applied to the sheet metal, which is placed on top of the board they make contact and create a connection. One wire is attached to the tinfoil, and the other to the sheet metal. The wires then directly attach to the control board for the old DDR mat. Turned out fairly well too, except one button was a little sticky but it was workable.