Latest DIY Controllerism on a $10 budget
Latest DIY Controllerism on a $10 budget Posted on: 15.12.2008 by Gavin le Roux Hey This is my latest DYI cost me $10 to make and lets me put my cue point buttons in a much more ergonomic position instead of bashing on my laptop keyboard. plus adds a few buttons for shortening and lengthening loops that the VCI dosn't have controls for. | |
| Keli Vandenbergh 05.09.2010 | ...
Originally Posted by djfrogstar
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| Giuseppina Wietfeldt 07.09.2010 | thanks! that's excatly what i was looking for! I wasnt aware of the increase/decrease parametres |
| Clay Lorow 07.09.2010 | Sorry, I don't have a link or any manual. I just figure it out myself. You should play a bit. Set something that you believe it could be it by its name, then try it out with some song. Here's a print screen how I did it. You should set type of controller to Button, and Interaction mode to inc(rease) or dec(rease), depending do you want to make it longer or shorter. Use the same setup, for example as I did to my + and - buttons, for change tempo. Use the Tempo function, with a slice difference that you can then change the "sensitivity" with Resolution setting. |
| Giuseppina Wietfeldt 07.09.2010 | good stuff! I bought the numpad but i'm having a bit of trouble understanding the controls in the mapping tool. What do i need to select if i want to map the + and - buttons to go through the different loops sizes (1,2,4,8,16,32) so that the + will increase the loops size to the next one, and the - button will decrease the loops size to the previous one? If you've got a link that explains the different what each title in the mapping tools does, by all means share it! thanks chris |
| Clay Lorow 07.09.2010 | Very easy,mate! I also did it for the first time when I mapped my numeric keypad. Go to Preferences in traktor, then Controller manager. In there, click on Add under Device drop down list, and add a generic keyboard. Now you will have a blank Assignment table. By clicking od Add in... under it, you will get the function list of traktor that can be assigned. When you pick what you want, simply press the Learn button and press the button on your keyboard that you want to use for that. And here's a little demo of what I did. Hope you will like it!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMFZl79AQh8 |
| Giuseppina Wietfeldt 06.09.2010 | hey! I love the idea. i'll get one of those and try using it as a pseudo-midi fighter. Only thing is that i've never mapped a controller in traktor. How do i go about doing it? I cant find information on it... |
| Brunilda Kora 05.09.2010 | Can't argue with that. Look forward to seeing it finished. |
| Jacquiline Dua 05.09.2010 | yes and no... they are attached with super small plastic clips all around the inside with a thin metal paperclip looking device,, really small... I would rather it take me 10 x longer and not have a broken key. Im the type with alot of patience ... i put on a movie... do a few rows.. let them dry and work on something else. im also working fulltime from home so I can come back to it all the time. Plus ive always found things that take alot longer to do allow you to rebelieve the whole thing a few times and can make corrections before its too late. |
| Brunilda Kora 05.09.2010 | Can't you just pop the keys off and paint them individually? |
| Jacquiline Dua 05.09.2010 | another tip for all you DIY people white DJTT knobs + nail polish = unlimited colors OPI brand nail polish often comes in sets which have smaller jars afaik they call them minis and dont forget glow in the dark nail polish enamel and look for TULIP SLICK fabric UV fabric paint for putting little dots to show the marker. also works well for covering LEDS to have nailpolish painted around them. like in this example... the painting looks sloppy atm, but im more concerned with painting the edges without ruining the circuit... later i will use masking tape to do the center part |
| Jacquiline Dua 05.09.2010 | http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&r...w=1680&bih=933 |
| Keli Vandenbergh 05.09.2010 | ...
Originally Posted by djfrogstar
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| Clay Lorow 05.09.2010 | I suggest first to do the mapping, then paint. I'm gonna paint labels on my keys so first I have to find the best mapping for them and then paint. I don't know if you are planning to do the same or just paint them in different colors,without labels. Nail polish is a nice idea...The brush that comes with them can make really nice texture on keys. |
| Jacquiline Dua 04.09.2010 | Well Ive started to paint my frogpad... and its alot of work because im afraid to pull the buttons off in fear I might break it... so its being masked with heatshrink tubing cut up.. and Im using nail polish because of the enamel... nail polish will stick btw and you have a ton of colors to choose from |
| Clay Lorow 04.09.2010 | Gr8 stuff, dude!!! Use it wisely! :-) @Str8upDrew: thanks!!! That does the trick! I even use the num lock key...When its turned off,I use up/down to search through my library, insert button to load a song, and left/right to search through the song. I will make some video tomorrow so that people can see what it does. I recommend to anyone who uses laptop for playing music to buy one of these, it really makes life easer! |
| Jacquiline Dua 04.09.2010 | Ive got one of these.. mabey Ill paint it up... this has alot more possibities because of the shift-alt-ctrl abilities |
| Graham Frazier 04.09.2010 | Under the View section "Toggle Last Focus" |
| Clay Lorow 04.09.2010 | Ok, I just got back from a local store with this. Hama makes very cheap PC add-ons, this one price is about 6$. Now I have to wait till monday to buy some paint spray cans to mod this thing. It would be cool to add some led light under keys, that will shine through gaps between keys, but I don't have idea yet how to do that. Also I didn't quite get you Str8upDrew, what exactly should assign to minus button so it would switch focus from deck A and deck B??? |
| Maisie Marras 04.09.2010 | this is geniouus! awesome idea... i might do this untill i have the $$ for a midi fighter sorry ean, the new 6gen ipod nano won the 'what should i buy' war because my 1st gen nano is almost dead. |
| Graham Frazier 04.09.2010 | If you just assigned the controlls to "Device Target", the assigned the "-" to "Focus Select" then you can bounce back and forth all you want. And the deck letter will be orange in trackor for the active deck, so you can easily tell which deck you're controlling. |
| Clay Lorow 04.09.2010 | Hey guys!!! I found this thread and I have a similar idea to do moding of usb numpad, but I have few questions. I want to assign something like this, 0 to be play, . to be cue, plus and enter to be pitch +/-, numbers to be hot cues and loops. So, can it be done to assign those keys for deck A in traktor, then by pressing some button (for example minus) to switch those commands to deck B? |
| Vinnie Tikka 27.01.2009 | ok, so i guess i will not be able to use the reguler notebooks 1-0 keys within traktor, if i want to use both the num-lock and the non-num-lock keys from the notepad. probably i should just give it a try, those numpads are like 10 bucks only.. thanks for the input. |
| Xavier Emanuels 27.01.2009 | Midi-Yoke is a Windows program, im not sure what the mac alternative is(as i use a pc). I have been told though that Mac's support a midi device being used by multiple programs at one time(not totally sure how true this is) - so it should only be a matter of not mapping the buttons on one peice of software and having them mapped to the other and vice versa. |
| Gavin le Roux 26.01.2009 | I believe its definitely possible with midi-yoke or a similar program. Ive never actually used midi-yoke so i don't know exactly what it can do. I believe a way to do what your asking might be to create a 'virtual midi device' with midi-yoke or similar and program it (may require an additional app for this) to turn your keystrokes from the keypad into midi notes that you will map in battery or whatever you like in the background, then just disable your 'said virtual midi device' in traktor so i wont trigger anything in that....also I'm not sure but you may have to go through your .TSI and delete any mappings to the number keys that you are using on the keypad because not sure if traktor will still recognize the 1,2,3, etc keystrokes before they are converted to midi via whatever program you use... Hope i made sense, Anyway i definitely believe in theory its possible to do what your asking. |
| Vinnie Tikka 26.01.2009 | after selling both the trigger finger and the mpd24 cause they were way too big for lugging them around, i got myself a nanopad today. but since that one got 12 pads only, i thought about this idead right here again. one question i have, when not in numlock mode, this one most probably triggers the same actions in traktor as the reguler 1-0 buttons on my notebook do, right? would it be possible to assign this numeric keypad to a certain application only? like, i want to use it to fire some fx sounds, running battery in the background of traktor. is there a way, maybe through midiyoke or something like this, to make the num-keys be read exclusively by midiyoke or batterY? saying i dont want the usb-numpad keys to reach my traktor. any ideas? OSX 10.4.11 btw.. |
| Florence Alch 21.12.2008 | yeeer it's a beast that! a video of it in action would be top |
| Brunilda Kora 21.12.2008 | I love these little numpad mods! There was a sweet one over at ALDJ, but it was done with a rubber numpad. I really like the idea of rubber keys - you can bash on 'em good and proper!!! BUT - painting rubber is out of the question, and I like the idea of adding a custom paint job to controllers (I painted a DM2 to match my Vestax Samurai (Silver and Cherry Red) mixer - looks sweet). Talking of finishes - has anyone tried to decal their controller with heat shrink vinyl? I've been looking for ages for a heat shrink sheet that I could cover my UC-33e with... |
| Gavin le Roux 21.12.2008 | hhhmm, not long could probably do it in 20 mins if i didnt have to wait for the water to dry for the drops effect |
| Paul Davison 16.12.2008 | Nice. How long did that project take? |
| Gavin le Roux 16.12.2008 | That was the plan to start with but the black key is actually the numlock key, so even though I could assign it in Traktor if it was turned off and then i wanted to use the other keys they wouldn't work because the keys send different messages depending on weather numlock is on or off. |
| juan garcia 16.12.2008 | looking at it, i'm wondering why you didn't put the black button above the loop start button so the green buttons would be lined up nice.... nice diy project. |
| Xavier Emanuels 16.12.2008 |
Originally Posted by psyanide
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| Gavin le Roux 15.12.2008 | Ok, got the USB keypad from a computer swap meet for $10, and i already had the paint at home from a previous art attack i did. The texture is pretty easy to do, what you need is enamel paint and a water spray bottle (There is a good Video at www.airbrushtricks.com on how to do it). Paint your piece the backing color you like, in my case i had black and white paint, and let it dry. Then lightly spray the keypad with the water spay just lightly so you get some decent sized beads forming on it. Then take a darker color (in my case black) and spay across the drops at a really low angle so one side of the drops gets painted and the other doesn't then just let it dry naturally. I had a bot of trouble getting the paint to stick to the plastic so rough it up with some fine sandpaper first. You can get similar Keypads of ebay for only a few $ + postage. BTW that nasty looking black key is the numlock i have assigned controls with numlock on so in Traktor the show up as Num8,Num5 ect. so if you wanted to you could then turn it off and assign 9 more controls to the center 9 buttons because now they will show up as pgup, pgdn ect and the arrow keys instead of numbers so you effectivly have 2 modes you can use. Anyway I'm happy with my $10 purchase, added some loop controls i was missing out on with my VCI and also i know have 12 cue point buttons i can smash really fast without worrying about wrecking my laptop keyboard. Hope i made sense. ,Brendan |
| Cristian Carmona 15.12.2008 | That 10key looks dope, how did you get that texture fx? |
| 15.12.2008 | nice one- tell us more about it. Like what spray paint did you use and where did you find that keypad? |
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