Analog Mixer to Midi Controller

[jonlambert]

Hey,

I've been thinking for a while about designing and building a midi controller. Partly because I'm penniless at the moment, and partly because I'm in need of a nice crossfader (that sends midi messages).

I've done a lot of looking around, but what seems like the biggest potential problem for me is building the case. I'm not that skilled, and it's bound to look dreadful.

I had an idea the other day however, when I found an old Numark 2-channel bog standard mixer (came with the fusion111 package I bought years ago). I was wondering if I could tear it apart whilst leaving the pots & case etc. intact, and fit a logic board (like the arduino) inside, hook it up, and essentially make it into a midi controller.

Anybody done this before? I'm fairly noobish with this whole controller building thing...

[DjNecro]

I did the exact same thing with an old Behringer DX-500... It's now the DX-500m... There's a thread with pics I took of it... lemme dig it up

[DjNecro]

Here it is: http://www.djtechtools.com/forum/sho...249#post226249

It was fairly easy to accomplish (having already built a couple of diy controllers that is...).

Feel free to ask any questions you may have

[jonlambert]

Fantastic. Thanks man. I'll have a read

[jonlambert]

That looks awesome,

Did you literally just hook the pots straight to the board? Or do you need to change the signal somehow? :S

Also, what components did you use?

Thanks for the help dude

[DjNecro]

Yeah, just isolated the pots and faders from the board and tapped into their pins... easy peasy


Depending on the number of pots faders and buttons you have you could either wire them directly into an arduino uno, or use a mega for more inputs. Alternatively you could use a multiplexer chip that essentially expands the number of inputs/outputs on the arduino (or any other microcontroller). That's what I did, I used two CD4051 analog multiplexers which then gets read by the arduino.

The only components I needed (other than wire and arduino) was the breadboard, a few resistors, midi jack, and two CD4051's... I have yet to wire in the buttons though, but for them i'd use 2 CD4021's, for the led's I'd use 2 or 3 74HC595's...

It will seem overwhelming, but assuming the attached pic is the mixer you're talking about. You only have a handful of things to worry about... 12 controls to be exact.. 5 Pots, 3 Faders, 3 Switches, 1 LED.

So you'd need at a minimum one CD4051 multiplexer (this one chip will handle ALL the pots and ALL the faders with ease), then you would just wire the 3 switches direct to the arduino, ditto with the led (if you wanted to)...

[jonlambert]

Ah sweet.

Yeah that looks like a good plan, and yeah that's the mixer. I'm looking at the DFRduino board (http://www.droboticsonline.com/index...emilanove.html), which seems like a cheaper (yet good) alternative to any other Arduino boards out there. It only has 6 analog inputs though, does that mean I need a multiplexer? As you can tell I'm a total beginner at this...

Cheers man

[Ashigari]

just keep in mind that you'll need some other control for EQ as you dont have enough knobs on there

and btw: there was a sale thread with a 4 channel DIY mixer with an enclosure and enough buttons + parts. only thing needed was the brain and wiring, was somewhere around 250$

edit: here it is http://www.djtechtools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=24786 looks like it's still for sale. and only 150$ whcih is an amazing price (and you get 4 channels and some arcade buttons!)

[photojojo]

Can you please take the full mix out of your signature? A linke to the mix is fine, but full embeds are against forum rules.