Motorized faders?
I was just sitting and playing around with my VCI when an idea struck me. Is there any DJ-controllers with motorized faders and would it be possible to install them on a VCI?
My first thought is that youd probably install a seperate “brain” for the faders. Assuming that you dont need a motorized crossfader, this would give the user 4 analog pots (since the pitch- and volumefaders wont be used). That, my friends is a second FX-bank! 
Any ideas?
The only one I know is the Behringer BCF2000 (Tim Exile seems to like it).
Why would you want motorized faders on a DJ controller?
Well, for example if you’re running 4 decks on a regular VCI, or just for the pitchfaders, so that they always match up to the number on the screen.
Sure you can.
Alps, Bourns and many others make motorized models.
They go for a tad more than regular faders, but that’s only reasonable I guess.
http://www.alps.com/WebObjects/catalog.woa/E/HTML/Potentiometer/SlidePotentiometers/RSN1M/RSN1M_list.html
Bourns - PSM, click it
Can be bought from RS-Components
Stanton SCS.1d has a motorized pitch fader.
If you modded a controller would you have to put another chip in to control it?
How would you control it?
Hmm.
I haven’t looked into motorized fader usage.
I guess if you had a 0-127 midi signal, you could wire something up to control it.
I’d be hard pressed to give you just a schematic and tell you to get building, without knowing of the controllers inside, the room, where the power comes from, etc.
Easiest way of asking is, how well versed in electronics are you? 
You’ll need to monitor the position of the Fader as well, so you may need Microcontroller & some programming skills.
Yeah, that’s why I asked his electronics skill.
It’s hard just to say go do this and that, when it’s a fair bit more complicated than that.
Getting a fader to move based on some input signal is more than doable, but making it behave properly is a lot more feisty.
Let’s study the behavior of normal and motorized faders.
Normal faders are dynamic resistors. Fader down (midi value = 0) means the resistance is so big, so that no signal can go through the fader circuit. Fader up (midi value = 127) means no resistance, so the complete signal can go though the circuit. DSP’s in your controller translates the fader resistance level (analog) to a midi value (digital). With these faders the information goes one way: from fader to DSP and then to the computer.
Motorized faders need a bidirectional information stream. The actions you perform on the fader need to go to the computer and the computer needs to send signals back to the controller to make the motors of the faders move.
I assume that there is no bidirectional information stream possible (the circuit from the computer, or better say from the DSP back to the fader motor, is not present in your controller; why would they?). Even if you have the skills to create these circuits, you would have to reprogram the DSPs, which is really difficult.
A better option is to use an extra controller (for example an Arduino) that can receive signals from the computer to activate the fader motors. This would still require the knowledge to do this and modding skills.
The easiest way is to buy an off-the-shelf controller like the Behringer BCF-2000 and use it together with your VCI.
The next thing is to “teach” Traktor to activate the fader motor when needed. I know that Traktor can output certain information (for example: LED output). I don’t know if Traktor is capable to output midi data specific to one midi control. If this is not the case, your whole plan goes up in smoke. I recommend that you check this with NI support.
Good luck…
I think it would be possible to just replace the faders with motorised ones as the board gives off midi out for the leds. Cant say for sure cuz the the fader part of the board might not give off midi out. Traktor only supports led and midi clock out however you can get fader support using bomes. Numonic i think thats how you spell his name could be a good person to talk to as he used to work for stanton and they have the scs 1d
to get the motors to work you need to be running their software called da router. This software is based on bomes. Not sure how willing he will be to talk as he would of probs signed a no discloser and might not of worked on that product
i’m sure you could try the presonus faderport or frontier designs alphatrak. they both offer a single motorized fader
The Presonus Faderport doesn’t work with Traktor, because it’s not midi mappable. The support for this unit must be built into your DAW. (I asked this on the Presonus support forums).
This is wrong. You can’t just drop a motorized fader into a controller that has non-motorized faders and have it just work. Motorized faders need power and bi-directional data from a controller chip.
Dennis is right. And Traktor WOULD support this implementation if someone were adventurous enough to try it. You would use 2 TSIs, 1 for the base controller and 1 for the fader add-on. You would modify the default TSI for the base controller and remove all the fader related commands, then build a second TSI to handle the faders (and their MIDI feedback). You are able to associate a specific TSI to a MIDI interface in Traktor, so you would associate TSI #1 to the base controller and TSI #2 to the fader mod.
If this was something you HAD to do, you could use MIDIOX to sniff the HUI output from the Faderport, then use MIDI Translator and it’s virtual ports to script translators to shift HUI to MIDI (and back if necessary - like to drive the motorized fader).
The problem is that while there are motorized faders out there, it is not for DJ’s. Most motorized faders are on large desks for concerts or theatre, for a large amount of buses (more than one person can adjust at once). So sound engineers will have a specific placement for that bus, and if they need to adjust it they can. One particular company that I know for sure uses them is Midas. But buying one of their desks would require you to take out more than probably anyone here can afford. That being said, I also know that the Pro Tools desks use them too, as the faders specifically adjust during playback, however I am not to sure if they do the same as the Midias desks.
If I’ve gone off on a tangent, I appologize. In short, we don’t need them because we have 2 hands. At that point, if you are using the sync feature in any program, you’re at the point where you’re not mixing but the actual controller is.
I looked into this and possible Arduino solutions awhile back. It’s simply easier to design a controller that has enough faders for each deck so that you don’t need motorised faders. If space is a concern, consider using encoders with LED rings.
Also, using motorised faders as pitch controls could be a frustrating experience. I used to own a Yamaha ProMix 01 in the mid-90’s which was one of the first semi-professional digital mixing desks. The motorised faders were clunky/noisey and didn’t offer the precision you’d need when trying to beatmatch two records together.
Just use 4 pitch faders for each of the 4 decks… simples.
I think the board does support bi directional data cant see y it wouldnt however I didnt think about powering the motors now that could be a big problem. I am no expert in this area so dont take my word for it
Why not? If you have a fader with more than one function that’s determined by software, a motorized fader will not only eliminate the often sloppy soft takeover logic, but also give the DJ instant visual feedback about the value of that fader.
Motorized faders CAN be much better than that, you just need to buy a better part. Even the faders on the BCF2000 are better than what you describe. And much nicer faders exist than those.
The problem isn’t that the main controller doesn’t support MIDI feedback. The problem is that if the main controller has traditional faders installed, there isn’t any mechanism to get that MIDI feedback to the motorized fader, no controller chip to interpret that MIDI feedback into meaningful data for the motorized fader, and as I said before no power for any of the above.