Archive for October 28th, 2007

Cleaning an ITG2 Machine

Last night was our DDR organization’s turn to host an event for LateNight PennState, held at the HUB-Robeson student center. While the club, aptly named “Dance Dance Maniacs,” did their duty with panel dance video games for the common people, one of the guys (Joseph Sherman) in our club headed over to the nearby pool room to do some work on the In the Groove 2‘s pads. I followed up later to check it out, and it was safe to say that the inside of the dance pads looked…really bad. Not so much that the sensors didn’t do their job of recognizing taps, but the dirt and grime that built up over the months couldn’t be removed by merely blowing and wiping on the internals. Interesting, considering a snug 1/4″-thick slab of Lexan (for each arrow) covered the box of electronics and sensors.

Since a picture would describe well, here’s one such box before any significant cleaning. Pardon the cell phone images:
10-28-07_0122

We decided that one of the Lexan arrow panels would make a good photo prop. (in order: Joseph Sherman, myself, Jason Gilleece)
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“I’m in your base, stealing your arrowz.”

Nevermind. The cleaning effort wasn’t really worth it then; we’re gonna need some heavier-duty equipment.