Lightbox - DIY Traktor MIDI Controller

WORK LOG:
- $192 worth of buttons ordered from www.arcadespareparts.com
- $40 - front panels cut out from acrly in a local shop (including a drill and some super glue)
- $272 for three UMC32 units from www.sparkfun.com
- Did a re-work of the layout for the controller (new pic below)
- $92 worth of extra buttons to fit the new design from www.arcadespareparts.com
- $146 yet another UMC unit, some leds, resistors and more ribbon cable from www.sparkfun.com
- $32 for potentiometers, knobs and a few push switches from www.electrokit.se (swedish store)

TOTAL COST SO FAR:
$750
(I would have saved about $100 if I hadn't changed the design which required two further orders from the two opposides of the world from my point of view - California & Hong Kong)




My idea with this controller is to create a realiable work horse for club gigs, utilizing the club/pub's own hardware mixer. The measures follows that of the CDJ-1000 to ensure that you'll always have room to fit it in "on site" and the sturdy arcade buttons will hopefully last me a long long time.
The design is not intended for mainly urban/scratch DJ'ing and rock/soul/pop gigs either, since it has no pitch faders for adjusting tempo or jog wheels for scratching.


And not to forget: this is two controllers intended for use with traktors "External Mixer"-mode, meaning that you will use a hardware mixer to blend your channels together - which provides better sound quality on large PA's and also leaves room for me to fit other goodies onto these badboys.


First prototype almost done!
There are some estethic artefacts here and there due to poor planning, but overall it's looking pretty nice imho. All the soldering is done and the LED's work like they are supposed to:
http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/8105/dsc02646f.jpg
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/7010/dsc02647k.jpg

The red and green buttons are pretty self explanatory cue/play buttons and the two next to them are pitch benders as long as either the CUE or PLAY button is pressed down. When none of them are, they function as SET LOOP and HALF LOOP.

The four knobs with their corresponding orange buttons are for effect control in a regular manner. The tiny red buttons inbetween are modifiers, and not exactly though out yet (two of them will probably allow you to select effects and the third is possibly a function switcher so that the orange aracdes can alternate as more advanced looping buttons or perhaps fast load FX buttons).

The bottom 8 arcade buttons are meant for hot cues.

Oh, and there is a small blue LED between the CUE and PLAY buttons at the top of each deck which will light up as soon as the given deck starts playing (good for keeping track of which decks are playing and which are not).

I'm silly, wrong post, corrected

Added pictures of my custom made front panel.
I just walzed in at a local metal shop and asked for a 32*37cm acryl piece cut out - $10.
Then I went to the local hardware store and bought a 29mm drill - $7.
After some drawing and calculating for the holes I had a made front panel for $17 instead of the $200 www.frontpanelexpress.com would have cost me.

(I will also order an overlay with printed letters and numbers later on - approximatley $40)

Hell yeah, this looks sweet.

cant wait to see the finished product :)

Wow dude this will be sick when its done :eek: cant wait to see how it turns out!

Yeah I hope so.

The buttons are ordered and will arrive in approx two weeks and the UMC32 controllers should arrive within a few days.

I've discovered a potential problem however. The potentiometers/knobs are too short to be mounted through hole, meaning that I'll have to engrave the acryl just where they are to be mounted (and it's not that much space left over actually).

Like Norm Abram says, "Measure twice, cut once." and...
"Before we use any power tools, let's take a moment to talk about shop safety. Be sure to read, understand, and follow all the safety rules that come with your power tools. Knowing how to use your power tools properly will greatly reduce the risk of personal injury. And remember this: there is no more important safety rule than to wear these — safety glasses."

Saftey procedures are not an issue for me - I've got lightning fast reflexes.

The custom engraving for the pots are underway anyhow. 4 done, 12 to go. (Looks like crap from below but it fits perfectly)

What arcade buttons did you order??
Just wondering.

these buttons:
http://happcontrols.com/pushbuttons/5891xxl.htm

(But from another webpage)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Str8upDrew

Like Norm Abram says, "Measure twice, cut once." and...
"Before we use any power tools, let's take a moment to talk about shop safety. Be sure to read, understand, and follow all the safety rules that come with your power tools. Knowing how to use your power tools properly will greatly reduce the risk of personal injury. And remember this: there is no more important safety rule than to wear these — safety glasses."

---

Another great tip.....might sound dumb....but believe me.....I know you all do it!

:)

Don't smoke anything before you do any work on this!

Ps....me included!

Update:

I've bought the micro controllers from sparkfun.com (3 UMC32 units) for $270 including shipping to sweden and insurance of the parcel.

I also ordered a new set of SANWA-buttons (supposed to be top of the line when it comes to arcade pushbuttons?) from: www.arcadespareparts.com. The 64 of them took a $192 chunk of my wallet including shipping and insurance of the parcel.
http://www.arcadespareparts.com/prod...k/dh/12146.jpg


The controller boards are due July 16th and the buttons will arrive July 20th (if FedEx are true to their promises). So there will be some massive soldering early next week!

Oh, and I've also discovered that my new SANWA buttons only can be mounted in panels with an height of 2-5mm... which means that I'll have to get a new piece of acryl that's thinner than my current 6mm piece. (The upside is however, that with the sanwa buttons I'll have room for my sound card inside the box aswell since they are only 2.5cm in height compared to the previous buttons that were 6.5cm in height)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Str8upDrew

Like Norm Abram says..

---

I would love to get The Norm to do a segment on making cabs for some monster horn subs.

http://img2.timeinc.net/toh/i/a/tool...ools-tlc-x.jpghttp://img158.imageshack.us/img158/7...nelscut1py.jpg

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sarasin

Another great tip.....might sound dumb....but believe me.....I know you all do it!

:)

Don't smoke anything before you do any work on this!

Ps....me included!

---

I disagree. The only thing that helps me get through the long and tedious task of soldering hundreds of connections, is burning one down...

"If you don't like my fire, then don't come around, 'cause i'm gonna burn one down."

tell me if this HID-device raving is getting annoying, but looking at the number of controls, you could've done this with two of these for a lot less money spent:
http://www.leobodnar.com/products/BU0836/

sure, you'd have to convert it to midi via software, but i've found this method to work like a charm.

yea, I've gleared at that solution too... but... besides the need for third party applications I also loose the LED functionality that I get with the UMC32:s...(the ability to toggle LED's from within traktors functions)

Updated the first post with the new design and some more info regarding the update.

seems like i've overlooked that one...
the new design looks awesome! its getting quite expensive though.

Yeah, the costs are running up a bit.

Right now I plan the whole project to total at around $800-$900 for two identical boxes.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Str8upDrew

I disagree. The only thing that helps me get through the long and tedious task of soldering hundreds of connections, is burning one down...

"If you don't like my fire, then don't come around, 'cause i'm gonna burn one down."

---

WORD!

Definatley not with power tools though, small burns are one thing, no fingers are another.

Why do you need 3 umc32's?

I understand that you get 32 buttons AND 32 knobs or faders per board. Would 2 not have done the trick ?

no its a maximum of 32 inputs made up of either knobs or buttons

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kingnerk

no its a maximum of 32 inputs made up of either knobs or buttons

---

Really?

The Hale micro site seems misleading then with its use of AND/OR.

"32 analog and/or digital inputs provides MIDI note or continuous controller data to your host application."

Actually, I need four UMC32's.... (in my original design i needed three umc's for four deck control in one box... now I've changed it so that I will create two boxes with two umc's in each)

That makes more sense! So its only 2 per unit and your making 2 of them on the front page.

So the website is right. You could have 32 buttons and 32 faders from one UMC32?

nope still only 32 inputs per umc! for instance i have 16 buttons, 12 knobs and 4 switches on mine

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MisterMoleyMole

That makes more sense! So its only 2 per unit and your making 2 of them on the front page.

So the website is right. You could have 32 buttons and 32 faders from one UMC32?

---

Exactly... and the other box will have the letters C & D accordingly.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by boileroo

nope still only 32 inputs per umc! for instance i have 16 buttons, 12 knobs and 4 switches on mine

---

So what does AND/OR mean then?

Updated first post with a new illustration that contains descriptions of each button (the greyed out text means that it's a secondary function)

Updated first post with picutres of the acryl boxes and an updated illustration...

Looking good autonic. I like you idea with the lighted play/loop I might use that.

Updated first post with last order details and hopefully the final pricetag for the two controllers: $715 (!)

If I had ordered exactly what I needed from the start and utilized the info at www.ucapps.de for forming my own micro controller, I think I could have trimmed the costs down to about $400-$500. But hey, I'm lazy and the UMC is one sexy piece of PCB.

This thing looks better and better everytime i see it.

Updated first post with new images of the *almost* finished first prototype.
Will start building the second unit soon (just waiting for 6 more green arcade buttons).

HIgh Five bro

awesome. now that calls for respect. would def like to see a vid of it beeing used :)

A video of it in use is coming up in a few days... it looks much better in a slight dimmed environment with the LED's lighting up.

I was just wondering autonic. the umc32 uses a different wiring scheme and I was wondering how you split it for digital and analog inputs?