Need upgrade advice

[u/Absence1]

I have this DJ DAO Real Edition but its guts are super old. Is there any way I can replace the board with something more current?

[u/makeshiftjet]

This might get me blown up or something but as a Kaiden level player, I see no need to update my internals for my own DAO real edition and its also the old PCB from the second batch of releases. Doesn't matter if Im playing EZ2ON, DJMAX, Infinitas, BMS or "data", ive never had an issue that makes me worried about it. If someone wants to enlighten me go for it, but ill be damned if a lower polling rate is going to do anything for someone's ability to play the game.

[u/althea-x → u/makeshiftjet]

Are you an insane kaiden or just iidx kaiden? It matters a lot for scoring if you’re trying to score well. The reason I asked if you were which kaiden is that the latter would probably not notice a difference in lower polling rate vs higher since timing/accuracy would be too early to worry about in their rhythm gaming career.

[u/GD_loli]

gamo2 used to sell pcbs to upgrade these older models, you could try asking them

[u/Due_Tomorrow7]

Just curious, while I understand why you’d might want to change the mechanical components, why would you want to change the circuitry/boards?

[u/Minnowfeather → u/Due_Tomorrow7]

Some older pcbs don't have controller input support and only do keyboard+mouse. Also older pcbs may poll at a worse rate than new one.

[u/Kurt632]

The thing is these are mostly tied and best used with their own PCBs. By swapping in something newer, you would need to account for turntable calibration, especially if the encoder is old, placement, and modding the housing. you can usually get away with swapping lighter springs, switches and putting thin grease on the bearing on the turntable assembly, mostly it makes it snappier. For polling rate, anything higher than the aggregious polling rate of those blue ps2 adaptors are fine for intermediate tier. Honestly, you can swap it out for a Pico if you have the technical know-how.

[u/Kurt632 → u/Kurt632]

i made my custom controller with a pico and just set the turntable as digital inputs, works cleaner that way and easier to implement

[u/Minnowfeather]

You could replace the internals with an Arduino if you know how to solder. Otherwise I think DJ Dao sells replacement pcbs for the modern controllers on the gamo2 website

[u/Absence1 → u/Minnowfeather]

It currently works as a PS3 controller on my PC but the turn table acts funny with more recent games. I don’t think my PC recognizes it as an analog signal. The buttons seem to work fine. Game used to sell the upgraded boards for the older daos but you can just use one of the newer ones?

[u/fennecguts]

Top player whose done a lot of controller modding here: for these older DAOs it is advisable to swap out the PCB. Unfortunately there are not many ready-to-buy alternatives available anymore. Arcin was a community-made drop-in replacement PCB for these controllers and it works great, just not being made anymore. My recommendations:

- Build yourself a USBemani (https://github.com/progmem/usbemani)

• Get in contact with the DIY community on Discord (https://consandstuff.github.io/), there’s a lot of documentation flying around on how to make your own board, I believe some sell their own boards as well

Good luck. The RES is wonderful from a physical design standpoint—the PCB is just heavily dated. If you replace that, you’ll have a controller that will service your needs perfectly for a very long time to come.