$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:
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).
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)
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.”
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.
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)
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:
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)
