[BUILD LOG] - First DIY Build - Numpad Mod
[BUILD LOG] - First DIY Build - Numpad Mod Posted on: 23.05.2011 by Olene Minyard I realise there's a few people taking this mod approach at the minute and a few new logs started up, which is a good thing I believe! Anyway, here's my log. The intention of this log is to show to people that beginner's can make mod controllers. As a background, I have no experience of modding nor of any electronic work. So, if that sounds like you, follow this log if you wanna make your own mod controller. This one will be a 4 x 4 grid in the Midifighter shape for 8 cue points per decks, hopefully with LEDs. Here's the numpad that I'm using. This is my first post, and I'm needing help already! I'm wondering how I will be wiring the buttons to the brain and how I can calculate what connects to where. There are 4 pics attached. They are front view and rear view of brain, the keypad with the underneath plastic layout part (which was folded up in half and had a ribbon connector that slot into the connector socket) and then one of the plastic part opened out. | |
| Nelle Potrzebowski 29.05.2011 | Amazing, we have been doing the same things this week! Here's mine so far. Bought numpad from eBay |
| Nelle Potrzebowski 29.05.2011 | Amazing, we have been doing the same things this week! Here's mine so far. Bought numpad from eBay |
| Nelle Potrzebowski 29.05.2011 | Amazing, we have been doing the same things this week! Here's mine so far. Bought numpad from eBay |
| Nelle Potrzebowski 29.05.2011 | Amazing, we have been doing the same things this week! Here's mine so far. Bought numpad from eBay |
| Jacqualine Arroyos 29.05.2011 |
Originally Posted by Rob
the way to do it is to "cut" the contact in half with a knife... be carefull with multiple grounds, usually you can't connect all together |
| Joan Kollmorgen 29.05.2011 |
Originally Posted by Rob
Another thing you can do is cut a v groove down the center of where each button contacts are with a utility knife and this will give you a larger surface to solder to. |
| Nelle Potrzebowski 29.05.2011 | Amazing, we have been doing the same things this week! Here's mine so far. Bought numpad from eBay |
| Joan Kollmorgen 25.05.2011 |
Originally Posted by brian_johnstone
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| Jacqualine Arroyos 29.05.2011 |
Originally Posted by Rob
the way to do it is to "cut" the contact in half with a knife... be carefull with multiple grounds, usually you can't connect all together |
| Joan Kollmorgen 29.05.2011 |
Originally Posted by Rob
Another thing you can do is cut a v groove down the center of where each button contacts are with a utility knife and this will give you a larger surface to solder to. |
| Nelle Potrzebowski 29.05.2011 | Brilliant! I was hoping someone could suggest another way of doing it without drilling. I'd be grateful if you could show exactly how I can do that? |
| Joan Kollmorgen 29.05.2011 | Thanks. Here's the link for anyone interested http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Commtel-USB-Nu...item2a0d00d61c To be honest i would'nt drill it anyway - just a quick rub with some wire wool then secure with hot glue. |
| Nelle Potrzebowski 29.05.2011 | Can't do links that well from my iPhone, but search eBay for: Commtel USB Numeric Beware! I learnt my first lesson yesterday, the circuit board is double sided so be careful where you drill, there is at least 1 button that cannot be directly drilled through, but there is a way around it by linking from other buttons. |
| Joan Kollmorgen 29.05.2011 | That Numberpad pcb will make it alot easier. Nice find any chance of a link? |
| Nelle Potrzebowski 29.05.2011 | Amazing, we have been doing the same things this week! Here's mine so far. Bought numpad from eBay |
| Olene Minyard 28.05.2011 | I'm still working on this. Just having broadband issues with my ISP. BT are truly fucking shit! |
| Arcelia Siebeneck 25.05.2011 | numpads don't require intermediary software to work with Traktor but as a midifighter clone, there's quite a limitation in the fact that you probably can't press more than two arcade buttons at the same time. Before you start the mod, it's probably worth mapping your numpad to Traktor cue points and testing it out to see if you can live with any limitations. |
| Joan Kollmorgen 25.05.2011 |
Originally Posted by brian_johnstone
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| Golden Faubert 25.05.2011 | this is a brilliant thread, just what i was looking for, ive been weighing up the options, i have a spare gamepad, a number pad and some buzz controllers lying around. i just want a basic midi fighter style controller for now and build something else later on, my question is, will you be able to use the instant gratification mappings on this?? great work so far and i look forward to seeing it finished. |
| Joan Kollmorgen 25.05.2011 | Yes you could do it that way if you want. Just buy some stripboard like this (I use it in most of my projects) It's good to see you on the community my friend. |
| Wendy Heckenkamp 26.05.2011 | hi. I'm working on a numpad-mod myself at this time. i plan on using a soldering board to keep the wiring to a minimum. i want to solder every connection i need to the board, and then solder every button to their dedicated board-lanes. this way every new button only needs 2 wires. in addition, it should give me some flexiblity. if i want to add or remove a "number" from my diy i dont need to rip of half of my mod whats your opinion on this? i added a little (messy) drawing |
| Arcelia Siebeneck 25.05.2011 | This is what I've worked out from your Excel chart: key: green wires get soldered to one terminal on the arcade button, red wires get soldered to the other terminal. Basically, it looks alright to me but obviously I haven't checked it against the actual plastic sheet circuits so there might be some mistakes. Actually, I can see one already - look at your chart and check out "Del" and "2" - they both share the same circuit which doesn't look right to me... |
| Arcelia Siebeneck 25.05.2011 | Hmmm I believe you get the general idea but i can see a couple of possible mistakes... don't forget each button needs at least 2 wires connected to it... The ". Del" button only has 1 wire. Also I'm not quite sure how the daisy chaining will work when you start to attach more than one cable onto each terminal of a button. Your wiring diagram doesn't show which terminal each wire is attached to on a button. This matters! Otherwise, if u get it wrong, the circuit will be completed even when the button isn't pressed. Going back to your original excel chart, I believe the best way to approach this is to make sure that all the wires on column one (the top plastic sheet) are soldered to the + terminal on the arcade button and all the wires on column two are soldered to the - terminal. You basically want to avoid creating completed circuits when no button is pressed down. Hope that makes sense! |
| Kristofer Krauel 25.05.2011 | I get it now. Daisy chaining sounded complicated but it all makes sense. I love this thread!!!! So do you have to daisy chain the - terminals on each arcade button the same way as you do the + terminals? Where are you getting your arcade buttons from? |
| Olene Minyard 25.05.2011 |
Originally Posted by mr.drumer.boy
Where would the wiring from the other terminal on the arcade buttons go? |
| Olene Minyard 25.05.2011 |
Originally Posted by MiL0
However, all use 2 terminals, and a couple use 3 obviously. so that mean some of the arcade buttons will have 2 wires soldered onto the + (one to daisy chained onto next button in terminal, and one daisy chained in from button on another terminal). Does this sound right? |
| Olene Minyard 25.05.2011 |
Originally Posted by Archies'bald
Going away with work for a few days today though, and waiting on parts deliveries from eBay, so might take a couple of weeks to get there. |
| Marva Cupid 25.05.2011 | i believe your chart is right, it just make a map on paper of where wires need to go. a circuit diagram if you like |
| Shay Wyche 24.05.2011 | I thought using a keyboard was more complicated than it is. Thanks for the explanation guys. |
| Arcelia Siebeneck 24.05.2011 | the next step is re-creating the circuit using wires and buttons! according to your chart above, connecting a button via two wires to terminals 7 & 8 will replicate the 'Enter' key, for example (edit: oops, bad example as Enter actually uses three terminals... you get the point though) Looks like most of the terminals have 4-6 wires connected to them... so you could daisychain wires by following the chart. This would mean that you only need to connect one wire to each terminal, and then daisychain (solder more than one wire to a terminal) the rest of the wires. gah, it's hard to explain properly... hope it makes sense! edit: terminals 1-3 are unused by the numpad... its unlikely that they would do anything if wired up... doesn't hurt to try though does it! |
| Olene Minyard 24.05.2011 | If it's right (and I'm hoping MiL0 or extraclassic could check please ), then I know where to wire the arcade buttons to and which arcade buttons will be where. One thing I need to check though. If 1-3 are unused by the original numpad (as it seems from my understanding), can I then use them or are they not recognised by the brain? |
| Kristofer Krauel 24.05.2011 | Find this thread fascinating. Good effort on starting this mate. Now that you know which wires have to connect to generate each number on the numpad whats next? how does this info now help you to the next stage of your mod? |
| Olene Minyard 24.05.2011 | Ok, from the pointers so far. I've tried to work the mapping out on the plastic cointact card. The numbers are the number on the 12 'ZIF' contacts. As far as I understand from looking at the ribbon connector, the first 3 aren't used. Now, I believe I've worked it all out, but need someone who understands it to check if possible please. What I have is: |
| Olene Minyard 24.05.2011 | Fab stuff! Got two Maplin stores within a mile and they're opening a third within about three minutes of my flat in a couple of weeks. Will pop in tomorrow to pick up the multimeter you linked to. Cheers Mil0! |
| Arcelia Siebeneck 24.05.2011 | yeah that's the one I got (mine was a few quid cheaper but from China).. it works pretty well except that it doesn't have a buzzer... just a visual alert instead. I believe Maplin are doing a cheap one at the moment too: http://www.maplin.co.uk/domestic-multimeter-37279 good if you've got a Maplin nearby |
| Olene Minyard 24.05.2011 | Will attempt to map the keys later and post my findings to see if they make sense. Also, woudl this Multimeter do the job: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...tchlink:top:en There are cheaper ones on there, but are from Hong Kong and China and can't be bothered to wait a month for it to be delivered! |
| Arcelia Siebeneck 24.05.2011 | that's correct daisychaining the arcade buttons might mean soldering more than one wire to each terminal on the arcade button... you need to look at the plastic contact sheets and work out what's going on. if no one else attempts it, I'll try and knock up a wiring diagram in mspaint later toevening . also, extraclassic is right on the money... you don't need to understand how the matrix works... just that by completing the circuit in different ways causes one of the numpad buttons to be pressed. Have you got a multimeter? If not, time to get one! They're very cheap on eBay (mine was less than |
| Marva Cupid 24.05.2011 | Yer that's what milo means |
| Olene Minyard 24.05.2011 |
Originally Posted by MiL0
I'm assuming what you mean is treat the circles on the plastic sheets as the arcade buttons and the straight lines as wires, and kind of daisy chain the arcade buttons as per the mapping on the plastic contact sheet. Am I right in believeing that? If so, how would I daisy chain the arcade buttons? |
| Joan Kollmorgen 24.05.2011 |
Typical that I pick myself up a numpad for an absolute beginner mod, and it ends up being a complex numpad!
The sheets of plastic with white dots on them have conductive traces leading back to that socket. When the top sheet is pressed onto the bottom sheet the white dots touch and complete the circuit which types out a character. So with this in mind you first need to decide which characters you want to use then follow the traces back to the socket on both the top and bottom sheet (Please note that a multimeter with built in Continuity tester will make light work of this process) As an example say you want to use the number 1 button. You follow the trace from the white dot on the top sheet and it goes to pin 3 on the socket, then you do the same for the bottom sheet which might lead to pin 7 (these are just examples) So what does this tell us? Well now we know that pin 3 and 7 create the number 1 so if you was to solder a wire to each of these pins and then touch them together it would type out the number 1. You will find that some numbers lead back to the same pin like in this image. This is example from this project. http://www.djranking s.com/community /showthread.php?t=23322 Repeat this process for the other buttons. As for pushing the wires directly into the socket. That is the first thing I would try, you might get lucky. |
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