Latest DIY Controllerism on a $10 budget
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.
nice one- tell us more about it. Like what spray paint did you use and where did you find that keypad?
That 10key looks dope, how did you get that texture fx?
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
I thought thats what you did, ive actually seen that video before, its a really good resource you linked too - nice job dude 
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.
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.
Nice. How long did that project take?
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
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…
yeeer it’s a beast that! a video of it in action would be top
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..
I think 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 think 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 think in theory its possible to do what your asking.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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???
Under the View section “Toggle Last Focus”
