Hardly.  I've noticed them myself, but only on the left side.

I cannot speak to personal experience for any errors on the left side, though I've heard of such misses and have suspected some having watched people. I want to say it's the up arrow on the left side, but we had a tech check that one out and clean it, so I'm not sure.

As for the right side, I have definitely had a couple of errors in the last couple days; I am almost positive it was the right side and I think the arrow was just sticking a little. I lost a roll on the right side and a couple way offs in various streams so I think it's worth taking a look. It's not *really* bad, but it can definitely be annoying occasionally and could feasibly degrade from here.

Anyway thanks for looking into it Bill!

Pad Way Offs are usually echos, rather than weak sensors.  Weak sensors will either mean it takes a tiny bit longer to register when you step lightly (giving you Excellents or Greats, normally - really broken Extremes have given me pad Goods, but Acme's ITG has never gone long enough without maintenance to get to pad Decents) or that a light step doesn't register at all.  Given ITG's polling rate causing the timing windows to shift slightly for every step, detecting errors from weak sensors (other than misses) can be extremely difficult.

A normal (or over-sensitive, due to too much tension in the bracket that sits between the sensor and arrow) sensor can sometimes trigger because the arrow is bouncing after you step hard, then pull your weight back off quickly - this would give you a Way Off.  ITG has a "debounce" setting that's supposed to detect and ignore such noise fairly well and the panel sits with less wiggle room that on a normal DDR machine, so echoes are unlikely, but possible - I can't comment, since I almost never get echoes on any machine, since I only step hard in sections that are slow enough that I'll keep my weight on the arrow for awhile.  Echoes are definitely something that is tied to technique and the player's build.  Another possible explanation (this does happen to me) - if you tap out extra steps to keep your rhythm, you might be stepping closely enough to the next arrow on that panel as to trigger it - stepping half a beat early on a song that's over ~160 bpm will almost always net you a Way Off.

Fixing an overly sensitive arrow is not fun.  I've had it happen at Sakuracon twice now; I clean the gunk off a sensor that's been giving misses, put it pack in place, and find that it will now trigger if I drop two coins on it from a foot above the arrow (or that the weight of the arrow alone is enough to trigger it).  Usually I hunt around for a slightly weaker outer sensor somewhere and swap it, so that the bracket tension compensates for the weaker sensor and the strong sensor has less tension on it and is now sitting in a less critical location.  I don't know if Bill's techs normally check that closely for a strong sensor when they look at the machine, but it's worth looking into if people are getting Way Off.

There's a lot of nuance things about maintaining these games that would be impossible for the average technician to know to look for, unless they are serious into DDR themselves.

The pad Way Offs might also be caused by an exposed wire on the sensors rubbing against metal. This is even more likely if a player is "shuffling" on the arrow, rather than depressing it straight down. I'd suggest making sure none of the sensor's connector wires are exposed anywhere.

Tom and I were experiencing that with his machine on the right side.  It was giving lots of Way Offs on different arrows, even though the issue was just with one arrow.  It turned out to be an over-sensitive sensor (hurr hurr) along with another sensor with its wires exposed.  The way that we find over-sensitive stuff is just by stomping on the metal next to the sensors.  If it lights up, it's probably over-sensitive.  I've had great success finding them that way, and it's a fairly easy test. =p

EDIT:  Also, I've found the only cure for an over-sensitive sensor is to just replace it.  There's no good fix for it.  So like Tony says, if there are no new sensors available, I would swap it for an outer sensor that's in better condition.

@Tricksy,
Nice analogy!  Actually everyone here should be arrow smashing game techs.  But yes, when a sensor is too sensitive, it belongs in the trash can!  Does Tony or anyone have sensors left over from tournaments in the past?  If so, and you are there, and you spot a bad one, feel free to swap it out.  :-) 

I have a pair of sensor in my car leftover from SPERGIN.  I'll take a look, though I don't know if my tool box includes the right driver to unscrew the bracket.  Worst case, there's a hardware store next door to Acme.

You use technology in ways I could never dream.

I didn't take a look, but I did have some issues on 2p up in the last couple sets before I left.  I'll probably end up looking at it tomorrow at some point.

Anyone who's been feeling like the 1p side is loose or wobbly - the foot under the upper left corner of the pad had not been put down, so that corner was bouncing up and down on the wheel.  I pulled the foot down, so the pad should feel sturdier and slide around less.

Bill, finally was able to stop by ACME yesterday.  SSFIV and DM in great condition!  The green tom on DM is very responsive now so whatever your tech did, did the trick.  Thanks!
-Chris

Kudos to Tony for coming out late tonight to fix the machine after being woken up. Thanks for being awesome!

Also, Ben lost his phone at ACME tonight. It's an iPhone 3GS in a white case. Please let him know if anyone finds it.

Bill, the bass pedal on DM is acting up. On fast hits it doesn't like to work, and it seems it doesn't register unless you COMPLETELY lift it up, which I've never seen happen on another machine. It's okay for, say, level 60 and below songs, but if you have a tech coming by at some point it might be worth checking out. It also felt kind of hard to push down, so maybe that's also being caused by the same issue or it's even causing the problem.

Everything else is great though, had some good scores on ITG today!

@Kevin,
We will take a look, thanks

ITG's 1P side is loose again =(

I called it in last night, but figured I'd post to make sure it's widely known: somebody absolutely trashed ITG's USB hub.  There's enough damage that it just needs to be replaced again.

I stopped by last night, found both USB ports to be pretty beat up.  I couldn't get my drive to fit in the 2p side, noticed it looked a little funny (the connector was scraped and not sitting in the right place, the metal socket was bent in the bunch of places), and when I poked at it to try and see if the connector was bent or if the whole port was unseated, the connector just snapped off.  Laura plugged her drive into the 1p port before I noticed the 2p side, and the 1p connector came out with her drive.  Right now, both ports are empty sockets.

Yeah, I saw signs of the USB hub being beat up as early as last Saturday.  One time the 2P wouldn't read my USB stick at all.

Acts like that make me lose faith in humanity.

Gerrak just called me from Acme - apparently the machine is consistently crashing during bootup today.  The couple fragments of error messages he could see indicate issues with Roxor's I/O kernel patch files, but it's hard for me to diagnose remotely.

I'll try to head that way this evening and check it out.  If I can't get the computer up and running without too much trouble, I'll just throw the new computer in - USB still isn't configured quite right, but everything else works, and that's a big step up from crashing while booting while I get either computer into a perfectly working state.

It's ACME.  Same place that has panhandling kids (you read that right).  Same place that's been near several mall shootings.

Hey Tony, yes, I heard the game is crashing, Allan let us know, but said he also let you know.
It was booted and running fine this morning when our guy was there messing with the USB.  BTW, I was not sure what the status is currently on the USB problem.  Did our guys get it fully working, or needs more help?  He mentioned having some more parts for it if needed.  Please advise.
THX

Same place where my phone was stolen.

And same place where Laura (I think?) had her laptop stolen (but proceeded to get it back), and same place where some guy straight up yanked my USB drive out of the ITG machine and tried to run off with it (some ITG player I don't know with the high score initials NIGG chased after him and stopped him, I am eternally grateful), and same place where some guy jacked $20 from me.

Alright, I couldn't quickly debug the crash, so I wound up swapping in the new computer.  I'm not sure why, by the boot script is a little finicky right now, so the machine will not boot into ITG following a reboot.  I'll throw together a quick fix for that ASAP, but the new computer has proven extremely stable when left to run for days/weeks at a time, so as long as no one intentionally reboots it, we're fine.  I put a sign over the USB ports mentioning that they don't work right now and you should not reboot the machine to try and make them work, since some people don't check the boards, and many might not check before the next time they go.  I'll try to fix the boot issues in one way or another either tomorrow evening or Saturday morning, since I can't really let it be in such a brittle state for longer than that.

@Bill: I honestly can't say if the new hub is working or not, as the new computer isn't configured correctly to handle USB drives yet.  I've finally kind of figured out what the problem is, so I'm finally doing more than randomly trying things to see if they work.  I'll let you know what I find as I get everything up and running.

That was Patrick who got his laptop stolen, but yeah, you get the idea.