Lightbox - DIY Traktor MIDI Controller
Lightbox - DIY Traktor MIDI Controller Posted on: 06.07.2009 by Karine Noe WORK LOG:- $192 worth of buttons ordered from www.arcadespareparts.com - $40 - front panels cut out from acrly in a local shop (including a drill and some super glue) - $272 for three UMC32 units from www.sparkfun.com - Did a re-work of the layout for the controller (new pic below) - $92 worth of extra buttons to fit the new design from www.arcadespareparts.com - $146 yet another UMC unit, some leds, resistors and more ribbon cable from www.sparkfun.com - $32 for potentiometers, knobs and a few push switches from www.electrokit.se (swedish store) TOTAL COST SO FAR: $750 (I would have saved about $100 if I hadn't changed the design which required two further orders from the two opposides of the world from my point of view - California & Hong Kong) My idea with this controller is to create a realiable work horse for club gigs, utilizing the club/pub's own hardware mixer. The measures follows that of the CDJ-1000 to ensure that you'll always have room to fit it in "on site" and the sturdy arcade buttons will hopefully last me a long long time. The design is not intended for mainly urban/scratch DJ'ing and rock/soul/pop gigs either, since it has no pitch faders for adjusting tempo or jog wheels for scratching. And not to forget: this is two controllers intended for use with traktors "External Mixer"-mode, meaning that you will use a hardware mixer to blend your channels together - which provides better sound quality on large PA's and also leaves room for me to fit other goodies onto these badboys. First prototype almost done! There are some estethic artefacts here and there due to poor planning, but overall it's looking pretty nice imho. All the soldering is done and the LED's work like they are supposed to: | |
| Karine Noe 08.07.2009 | Added pictures of my custom made front panel. I just walzed in at a local metal shop and asked for a 32*37cm acryl piece cut out - $10. Then I went to the local hardware store and bought a 29mm drill - $7. After some drawing and calculating for the holes I had a made front panel for $17 instead of the $200 www.frontpanelexpress.com would have cost me. (I will also order an overlay with printed letters and numbers later on - approximatley $40) |
| Herschel January 06.07.2009 | I'm silly, wrong post, corrected |
| Karine Noe 06.07.2009 | The red and green buttons are pretty self explanatory cue/play buttons and the two next to them are pitch benders as long as either the CUE or PLAY button is pressed down. When none of them are, they function as SET LOOP and HALF LOOP. The four knobs with their corresponding orange buttons are for effect control in a regular manner. The tiny red buttons inbetween are modifiers, and not exactly though out yet (two of them will probably allow you to select effects and the third is possibly a function switcher so that the orange aracdes can alternate as more advanced looping buttons or perhaps fast load FX buttons). The bottom 8 arcade buttons are meant for hot cues. Oh, and there is a small blue LED between the CUE and PLAY buttons at the top of each deck which will light up as soon as the given deck starts playing (good for keeping track of which decks are playing and which are not). |
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