Midi Fighter "Scratch" controller with touch-sensing surface?
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  1. #1
    Tech Wizard
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    Default Midi Fighter "Scratch" controller with touch-sensing surface?

    Ever since I've been seeing the NS7 II and making routine trips to my local Guitar Center to play with it (and losing all track of time) I have been craving some way to scratch that would replicate that active motion. Seeing as how the NS7II is a $1500 controller, I doubt I'll be able to afford one any time soon. So I started kicking around some ideas. This could be done in two ways, one would be just the midi fighter block with a small spinning jog wheel on it, but it would have some way of having perpetual motion kept in time with the speed of the music. I realize that the addition of motorization would add extra cost and complications to this device.

    The latter way that I think might work better would be just a flush, flat surface that has touch / pressure sensitivity and either an LED ring around the outer edge, or glowing LCD sort of like the two circles on the QuNeo, that indicates the location of the "needle." The touch sensitive surface would allow you to "grab" the virtual disc and move it around, the "pressure sensitive" part would allow you to get a more realistic control, if you just lightly place your finger on the surface, you get the same effect as if you gently laid your finger over a spinning disc, if you add more pressure, you get more slow down, or flat out stop. When you touch the surface, the "needle" (represented by the Radar-ish line) wouldn't jump to where your finger is, you're merely just slowing or stopping its overall movement, or dragging the "platter" around by swirling your finger around, wiggling, whatever. The whole point of this device would be to give someone reliable, nearly authentic scratching capability without having to go buy something that A: takes up a great deal of space and B: is super expensive. It would be preferable that the device work across most scratching software, so that isn't tied down to one in particular (like Numark's NS7). If you want to use it in Traktor, use it in Traktor, if you want to use it in Serato, use it in Serato. This would not be something someone would actually want to DJ their whole entire set on like you would an NS7 or a Traktor Kontrol S4, since there just aren't enough "bells and whistles," but rather it would just a device to facilitate scratching that would come out more authentic-sounding than what typically comes out of controllers with static, non-perpetually rotating jog wheels, while making it easy and affordable.

    The mute button would be for doing quick, sharp mutes (like I used to do back when I would screw around with an old DM2 Mixman I had rigged up to work with Traktor and had my "Play" buttons for each deck set as mutes, since I couldn't do it to the center buttons as those were needed to "activate" the jog wheels for scratching). The Volume slider would be for doing more fluid linear cuts. The Analog stick would serve the same purpose it did on the DM2 Mixman; phase effects and junk, though really it could be mapped to anything.

    Last edited by UoPoko; 10-23-2014 at 01:18 AM.

  2. #2
    Tech Wizard
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    This also looks interesting... surely a motorized equivalent could be made,
    but at what cost, I've no idea... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRgC7rT7oIM
    Basically dude just made a platter with, I assume, some sort of surface that
    just uses conductivity to know when it's being touched by human hands.
    Last edited by UoPoko; 03-20-2014 at 12:50 AM.

  3. #3
    Tech Wizard
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    Here's another one.

  4. #4
    Tech Wizard
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    0:55 mark....
    Last edited by UoPoko; 03-24-2014 at 04:17 PM.

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