MIDI Fighter Announcement vs NI Controller Announcement
So which controller are you more excited for? The NI Traktor Controller, or DJTT’s very own MIDI Fighter?
I know I’m looking forward to that sexy little grid of arcade buttons, myself.
I have one of those bad boys sitting right next to me - pretty exciting!
I mean how much could this thing actually cost? There isn’t much to it… I built the same thing out of a broken Oxygen 8 for $17.67 for 16 arcade buttons, screws, wire, and some wood.
well, NI controllerlooks great,slim, andseems to be really complete for what i wanna do. Right now i use a Xone 1D to control all 4 decks plus i use an external mixer (i request a xone 62 or 92). I love my xone 1D, but could really use like an extra row of knobs and buttons. I don’t need them, but i could set some more sh!t up if i had them. With that being said i think the NIKontrol is really great, but i will need 2 of them, and i am upset to lose my sliders/faders… I use them to control the dry and wet of all 4 decks effects and it also turns the effects on… so i am just worried about losing them. I think i am gonna buy 2 of the NI Kontrol X1’s but those damn sliders have me upset… hopefully i can reprogram it to do the same thing on the Kontrol X1, I know they are saying we can, so i will just have to get used to turning the pots for the dry wet as opposed to using the sliders…
The NI controller sucks balls. sure it has some backlit LEd buttons, but it is the same footprint (although annoyingly shallow and needs a special bag/riser to get it to mixer level) and has 1/4 of the potential of a Xone: 1D for the same price. Xone 1D > NI crap.
Now on the new DJ tech controllers, they aren’t really comparable to either however I would take one over that NI junk any day. It looks like it will have a lot of creative possibilities and be different and fun to use. I might get one in addition to my 4D and 1Ds as a hot cue control center… i always liekd the idea of arcade buttons but I’m an elitist gear whore analog freak and would never use a VCI, so this is a cool chance to incorporate the snappy arcade button aspect into my setup. As long as it is priced right… If it is over $150 then I probably won’t buy it since I could make one for half the price, but if it is priced well it could sell a lot of units. If i could add some potentiometers we would be in business. 
Im SUPER excited for the midi fighter, but whats with the black one with the 4X4 buttons and two analogue sticks? i NEED that one
Wow, looks fantastic. watch this space for costings huh. Might be a coin flip purchase.
I know I am going to try my damndest to get a Midifighter. I’ve already got an Akai MPD18, which is essentially the same thing, but those arcade buttons just look so cool.
With the way it will have the LED’s next to each button, the midifighter would be pretty handy to use as a step sequencer too.
For now I might be swaying to the MIDI fighter. But that’s just because of the extra’s it can be.
Modded extra value vs standard only always ends in a Mod > Standard for me.
That was one of our key motives with the Midifighter, unless we make 10k we cannot offer a price that competes with the other mass market controllers, at this stage we couldn’t even afford the tooling for a cheap plastic enclosure.
If you can write any kind of code at all it is not that difficult to grab the source code, modify it to do what you want, and then you can upgrade your firmware via USB, no need for development tools or expensive compilers, or pissing round with shitty software and serial ports (cough cough).
The 4 spare digital inputs could be easily coded to create an SPI port which you could interface to all kinds of other chips giving more LEDs, or many more digital/analog inputs, rotary encoders etc.
We’ll go into this in more detail on the Midifighter.com site no doubt, but the expansion port is more exciting than you might imagine.
The basics: You get 4 digital in/outs and 4 analog ins.
Using this you can add 4 switches and 4 sliders.
OR, use analog multiplexers driven by the 4 digital lines to select between 16 banks of 4 analog ins = 64 sliders.
OR, use the digital lines to implement a latch-and-shift-in bank of as many switches as memory will allow (256? 1024?). Plus use the other digital line to switch between two banks of 4 analog ins = 8 pots.
OR use three of the digital pins as an SPI bus (MSIO, MISO and CLOCK) to talk to another microcontroller on the other side at high speed and send LED settings, read inputs and control a full machine with the Midifighter acting as the USB-MIDI host.
The limits are really your imagination and daring in the electronics sphere. We did the hard part of setting up a USB-MIDI class compliant controller so you get to play. This is why we call it a “platform”. Keeping it open source also allows others to learn from your adventures.
can someone explain (or point me to a resource) what types of controls would be compatible with the digital inputs and what would be analog?
sorry for the noobishness
Your gonna have to make one anyways if you buy it from them lol! You get all the parts you need to build the controller (minus the arcade buttons…). Thats why the price boggles my mind.
Oh yeah and they didn’t use light up arcade buttons 
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Funny.
The standard light up arcade buttons are about 55 mm deep, that would have made the midifighter about 70 mm deep in total losing its portablility.
The only other way to get light up buttons is to MOD the low profile kind, which is what we hope people will be doing with these controllers.
The sanwa buttons were choosen as they have the best feel out of any of the arcade buttons, which is the purpose of using arcade buttons over pads.
Assembly takes about 5 minutes tops
Digital inputs will allow you to hook up 4 extra switches, or two rotaries, or four led outputs
Analog allows you to hook up four knobs, or four touch strips, or an accelerometer, or four faders and so on.
We are fully aware that this is not a complicated device, it is one designed to at the most basic level give someone who has never ventured into the art of DIY a great starting point by requiring no soldering, with room to learn and expand by their skills by taking advantage of the expansion port and open source design.
I have to ask what interface you would plan on using if building this for half the price that gives class compliant drivers with 16 inputs and 16 outputs.
Wow, I really am very impressed and intregued by this project, in equal measure. Congratulations to all those involved.
A question: will this be available in a “bare bones” circuitboard only kit in the future?
We dont have any plans to do a bare bones PCB for now but if people express interest we would def consider options around this
edit: nermind, already posted here and forgot.
@midifidler- Do we have an official price? I was basing that on the assumption that it would be $200 or more in which case yes I could build it for cheaper. If it is under 200 that is a different story. I still want one, price will be the determining factor if I get one.
Thanks for the reply, I would definitely be interested in this if you decided to do it