*Build Log* DIY Controller From Scratch
*Build Log* DIY Controller From Scratch Posted on: 07.08.2010 by Lala Cortina Hello! I've been djing small house parties for a while now, nothing too crazy, mostly just friends. For the longest time i've used Winamp of all things along with a third party crossfader plugin. Well the bug has bitten and after doing some research and seeing Ean's AoTS bit, I got my hands on a copy of Traktor Pro and started looking at controllers.There are quite a few out there, to my surprise! After looking at a few, and actually getting to play with some, I was not satisfied by any one in particular. So I decided to go ahead a build my own. I am an avid DIY'er and this project will keep my occupied for some time. So, here we go! I really like the layout of the VCI-100, so I am purloining some of the design cues from that controller. I also had trouble locating a suitable enclosure, so I opted for a Midi-Fighter like open sided setup. I'll post updates here has I go Parts so far: $16 - Lowe's - 18x12 1/4 Inch Acrylic sheet for the top and bottom panels $5 - Ace Hardware - 3/8 Inch bolts with 1 1/2 Inch spacers to space the panels $16 - DJTT - 8 Arcade Buttons for Play/Pause, Cue1, Cue2, Cue3 on each deck $4 - DJTT - 2 Arcade Buttons, one on each side of the top panel for Shift functionality $39 - DJTT - Green knob pack from the DJTT store for Faders, EQ, Fx etc... $75 - UHID - UHID Board for interfacing it all to the laptop $20 - Wirecare - 1/8 Inch flex weave wire sleeve $8 - Sparkfun - Green LEDs $8 - Sparkfun - Blue LEDs $12 - Sparkfun - Rotary POTs $9 - Sparkfun - Jumper Wires $2 - Sparkfun - Heatshrink $4 - Sparkfun - 10 Segment LEDs -------- Total cost to date: ~$215 -------- Freebie - Micro-ATX power supply on board to provide 3.3v 5v and 12v for LED lighting, the USB interface, and some future parts that I have not acquired yet No longer being used: Griffin Powermates for the jog wheels And last but not least, a couple of old cannibalized hard drives -------- The assembled enclosure. protective film still covering the acrylic top and bottom. The controller is 18x12 and around 2 1/2 tall. Horray arcade buttons! The green buttons do not match the green knob pack nearly as close as I wish they did. I was going to use the green buttons for my Shift and Play/Pause. After speaking with Zach @ DJTT on the phone yesterday I will be using all Black buttons. Thanks again for your help yesterday sir! Knobs! Self explanitory here~ Eyeballing a potential layout for the controls. The two that are spaced wide at the top will be Master and Headphone vol/gain. They are spaced to provide a place for one of the components I have not gotten my hands on yet. You can also see the UHID board under the top panel, just below center. The UHID board that will make it all work. I will actually need to run a second 8 input board to handle a few more knobs. This thing is REALLY tiny. The first Powermate, still assembled, beneath the top panel. I will cut a hole in the top panel to allow access to the Powermate. Old'n'Busted hard drive. Time to gut it! Hard drive top cover removed. The platter, the only piece I wanted~ Scrap parts. Removed the top knob from the Powermate. You can see where I am going with this... Jog wheels Sitting on top of the top panel, just to get an idea. Removing the friction material from the Powermate so it can free-spin. And the platter is attached to the Powermate. I do not like the current screws I used, so they will be changed soon. It free-spins pretty good when I want it to, and the 'click' functionality of the Powermate is maintained. Nothing as sensitive or versatile as the Vestax wheels, but I am sure I will find a use for it. That's it for now. More to come! | |
| Graham Frazier 22.08.2010 | Excellent build log. Keep up the good work. |
| Ninfa Larranaga 22.08.2010 | great job so far! |
| Lala Cortina 22.08.2010 | Much progress this weekend. Received parts from Sparkfun and learned a few things the hard way about cutting 1/4 inch acryllic. Sparkfun delivers! 10k Pots Jumper Wires LEDs Heatshrink Tubing -------------------- I started cutting the holes for the arcade buttons with an 1/8 inch pilot hole and then a 15/16 inch Speedbore on my drill. Got the first 5 holes cut out no problem. Then when I moved to the other side, this happened on the first one. It spidered across to one of the pilot holes I had drilled. -------------------- So that kinda ruined my evening. Went to Lowe's a couple days later and bought another 24x18x1/4 inch sheet and had it cut in half like the first one. Now I have a spare if I trash the one I am working on! While I was at Lowe's I went ahead and picked up a 1 inch hole saw as well. The Speedbore was slow going and also is the reason the first panel was ruined. The difference between the holesaw and the Speedbore is amazing. Cutting the holes is a cakewalk and appears to be much less stressful on the panel. So far so good... Measuring the other side. Success! -------------------- Time for a tasty beverage~ Next I measured and drilled the 5/16 inch holes for the center EQ. Measuring and eyeballing the FX knobs. All the EQ and FX holes are drilled. They look rough, but its just the plastic film that covers the acryllic. Here you can also see the small hole I drilled to a depth of about 1/16th inch for the locating pin on the 10k Pots. Beer break! Mounting the 10k Pots. All the 10k Pots are in. Micro ATX power supply mounted. This will supply 12v for accessories and possibly lighting, 5v for the powered USB hub, and 3.3v for LEDs and any additional components that require low voltage. It uses an external brick that supplies 12v DC @ 5 amps. More than enough juice. Top panel in place with power supply. It's close, but there's room to spare. Mounted the UHID board right in the middle of the bottom panel. -------------------- Time to get started with the wiring. First task is to connect ground wires for the arcade buttons. The UHID board works by watching for it's input pins to be pulled to ground, so all of the arcade buttons can easily share one grounding pin. I will then connect each of the other terminals on the buttons to their own input pins on the UHID. Here I have soldered on the first set of ground wires. 1/8 inch sleeving and heat shrink in place. I like the look of the sleeving! And the first grounding spider is fully assembled I cut one of the jumper wires from Sparkfun in half, and soldered it to the spider. Sleeved with heat shrink of course! -------------------- That's it for now! Both arcade button ground spiders are assembled. Next weekend I will work on wiring the 10k Pots. So far so good! I also did some testing with the UHID and Rejoice. M-Joy is not going to work, so I had to find a different HID-MIDI converter. Rejoice works like a CHAMP! I can't wait to finish this controller and put it to work! |
| Keli Vandenbergh 10.08.2010 | ... I understood at u-hid page that every spintrack will be a "separately" axis (mouse have two) and you could implement in their software the mouse function... Traktor doesn't permit mouse scratching? It could be possible make a "click macro" every time you touch the encoder (or put a capacitor over the scratchpad) that send this "stroke" (with click and window position) such as mouse scratching (but a bit accurate...) Download the configurator program and check their possibilities before discard... if not I will help you in find new "core". ... |
| Lala Cortina 10.08.2010 |
Originally Posted by photojojo
Originally Posted by jfd6812
Originally Posted by MiL0
Originally Posted by tyfurious
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| Gilma Marchini 11.08.2010 | I love you. |
| Arcelia Siebeneck 11.08.2010 | how are you getting around the windows limitation of 8 analogue inputs (potentiometer) via HID usb? it looks like you're planning on using more than 8? |
| Onie Sarandos 10.08.2010 | Sparkfun sounds cool... |
| Leeanna Ayla 10.08.2010 | God I love Sparkfun!! |
| Lala Cortina 10.08.2010 |
Originally Posted by Mudo
However, I am now searching for a different solution. I already had the first Powermate from a while back, but I didn't know until today that Griffin doesn't sell them anymore. Ordered some more parts from Sparkfun: 14x Rotary Potentiometer - 10k Ohm, Linear 25x Blue & 25x Green Superbright LEDs 2x sets of 10 .1" Hookup Wires 5' x 1/4" Heat Shrink Tubing 2x 10 Segment Blue LEDs The 10 Segment LEDs will be incorporated into a VU meter at some point. They're pretty cheap from Sparkfun, so I ordered them now since I was grabbing other stuff anyways. I updated the original post a bit with some more information and to reflect the new parts. |
| Keli Vandenbergh 10.08.2010 | ...
Originally Posted by thelpb
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| Onie Sarandos 09.08.2010 | Very cool-stuff-def looking forward to seeing ur progress!! |
| Lala Cortina 09.08.2010 |
Originally Posted by Mudo
The problem is that in order to use them with Traktor, I only have one option: GamePad mode, in which each pulse from the SpinTrak is registered as a button press. Not only is this what I am already doing with the Powermates, the Powermates are considerably cheaper. This is eclipsed by the fact that Windows XP only supports 2 Joysticks/Gamepads at a time, and I need both of those slots for my Faders and EQ/FX Knobs. Such a shame too, cause the SpinTraks are sweeeeet~ |
| Keli Vandenbergh 09.08.2010 | ... Put it, please! http://www.ultimarc.com/SpinTrak.htm ... |
| Lala Cortina 09.08.2010 |
Originally Posted by iCallShotgun
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| Holli Dienner 09.08.2010 |
Well the UHID board is USB, the Powermates are USB, two of the other devices that will be on board the controller will be USB, and I will have a +5 volt power supply on board as well. Simple solution to make it all work: A Powered USB Hub in the controller. I can strip the hub out of it's enclosure to make it as small as possible. With a little soldering work I can also shorten the cables to their minimum length.
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| Lala Cortina 08.08.2010 |
Originally Posted by TABS
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| Matthew Urtel 08.08.2010 | I want to see these vids of the powermate. |
| Ninfa Larranaga 08.08.2010 | suweet! |
| Lala Cortina 08.08.2010 |
Originally Posted by Archies'bald
Originally Posted by freakuency
The UHID board does not convert to MIDI, in a nut shell it allows me to create a keyboard (of the QWERTY type) with any buttons or switches that I choose. I can then assign functions in Traktor to use keypresses rather than MIDI notes. The UHID board will also accept potentiometers (ie knobs and faders) and convert them to analog joystick inputs. With the joystick inputs, I can use MJoy to create MIDI notes for the functions in Traktor that cannot realistically be controlled with a simple keypress. All in all, im just taking this DJTT post to the next level and adding a little more to it at the same time. |
| Korey Ehman 08.08.2010 | Haha quality. I wish i was technically gifted enough to do that. Although might have a crack at a midi fighter kid soon. |
| Shona Laprarie 08.08.2010 | Definitely following this thread. I've been very interested in doing something like this myself, possibly using the MIDIbox system. I love the idea with the hard drive and Powermate. But the Powermate is a USB device on its own, how would you integrate it with the controller itself? I did a bit of reading on that UHID card. Looks interesting. 50 inputs... so does it convert these inputs to MIDI notes, or will you need some other device to do this? |
| Shay Wyche 07.08.2010 | Judging from what I've read from the reviews on that button it's a replacement for the X-Box controller buttons. Would it be possible to buy broken controllers off of Ebay to supplement your buttons? If you could find old ones with damaged cords, you may be able to desolder the buttons for next to nothing. Only thing is I don't know how they are mounted in the controller. Hell, you may even be able to use the rest of the controller as a brain for some of your other pots, buttons etc. I'm just believeing out loud here. You're main problem would be trying to mount the buttons, I believe. |
| Lala Cortina 07.08.2010 |
Originally Posted by iCallShotgun
Originally Posted by Archies'bald
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| Shay Wyche 07.08.2010 | Ok. This is where things can get a little awkward when you're doing stuff like this. Do you need the tactile feel of arcade buttons and do you also need to have a half inch hole? If not, something like this might do on Ebay link. The response is nowhere near as good as the arcade buttons (it's spring is very strong) and it's 16mm (I don't know what that is in imperial measurement), but it's cheap and it's a solid button. If you are Stateside you may be able to find something similar. |
| Holli Dienner 07.08.2010 | Awesome! This looks like a great project. Can I ask where you got the acrylic top and bottom sheets? |
| Lala Cortina 07.08.2010 |
Originally Posted by oskars
The Powermate is an unlimited spin rotary encoder. I've already done some simple testing with Traktor and the jog functionality works very well when I bind the left and right spin so a simple keypress. I'll post a video~
Originally Posted by Archies'bald
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| Shay Wyche 07.08.2010 | I was going to say if you need anyone to help you that there are many here on this site willing to do so, but you seem to have a good knowledge of what your doing, so maybe you can teach us a few things. |
| Wava Egizi 07.08.2010 | Nice! Which uhid is that and how much did it cost? How will you make the jog wheels work with unlimited rotates? |
| Leeanna Ayla 07.08.2010 | Yeah, I'm subscribing to this thread!!! |
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