Reply to Lightbox - DIY Traktor MIDI Controller

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: