*Build Log* DIY Controller From Scratch

[thelpb]

I reached the same conclusion.. MORE BUTTONS!!

check out my thread:
http://www.djtechtools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18302

Scrap the jog wheels, more arcade buttons definitely

I'm researching options for adding more buttons without needing to purchase additional hardware. Strongly leaning toward scrapping the jog wheels.

AHHH this is so cool, its really cool to see all of the steps in building something like this.
Thanks for showing us! Im excited to see how it will end up

My pleasure! And this is only the first controller ;-)

Sell your PowerMates cheap to me

Hahaha well if I do end up scrapping the jog wheel idea (very likely at this point) I will probably post them both in the For Sale forum.

[MiL0]

hey man - very nice progress... your controller is starting to look very much like the controller I'm designing. Where is the 2nd LCD screen going? (the one you're using as a VU meter... have you finished the LCDSmartie script btw?).

Also, how many u-hid's are you using altogether?

[thelpb]

hey man - very nice progress... your controller is starting to look very much like the controller I'm designing. Where is the 2nd LCD screen going? (the one you're using as a VU meter... have you finished the LCDSmartie script btw?).

Also, how many u-hid's are you using altogether?

I still have a TON of work to do on this thing before I will consider it 'done', but it's getting there I can actually use it now, so I can start working out the bugs so to speak.

I am currently using three UHID boards, one 50 input board and two 8 input boards. I went with two of the 8 input boards because I needed them to show up in Windows as individual devices. Windows supports 8 analog axes per device. Rejoice however will only convert 6 of them to midi per device. So with three boards, I can have a max of 18 axes, with the current setup I am using 17 of them.

I had planned to put the second LCD vertical between the volume faders. When I was working on the LCDSmartie plugin though I ran into a problem. Currently I do not have a dedicated sound card, so I am using the on board 5.1 and ASIO4ALL. This is not by any means the permanent setup, but will have to suffice for now.

The problem is that since ASIO4ALL accesses the sound card in kernel mode, there is no way to read the levels from it for the LCDSmartie plugin. I didn't want to put the second LCD in place until I know if the drivers for say an Audio2DJ will allow me to read the levels. Simplest way to know if it will work or not is if the outputs for the sound card show up in the Windows mixer.

Anyone out there with an Audio2DJ or Audio4DJ wanna check this for me?

[MiL0]

ah that's interesting... and not exactly how I thought you were developing the plugin.

Have you thought about trying to get the LCD to accept midi information? If you could, then you could output LED midi directly from Traktor (Traktor can output VU midi data - it's used to illuminate VU meter LED's on midi controllers).

If this isn't possible then how about getting the plugin to accept qwerty keyboard triggers? It'd be fairly trivial to write an Autohotkey script that sits between Traktor and the LCDSmartie plugin, converting the VU midi output from Traktor into keystrokes which the LCDSmartie plugin could read. I'd be happy to help you with the AHK plugin, if you need it

[thelpb]

ah that's interesting... and not exactly how I thought you were developing the plugin.

Have you thought about trying to get the LCD to accept midi information? If you could, then you could output LED midi directly from Traktor (Traktor can output VU midi data - it's used to illuminate VU meter LED's on midi controllers).

If this isn't possible then how about getting the plugin to accept qwerty keyboard triggers? It'd be fairly trivial to write an Autohotkey script that sits between Traktor and the LCDSmartie plugin, converting the VU midi output from Traktor into keystrokes which the LCDSmartie plugin could read. I'd be happy to help you with the AHK plugin, if you need it

I've been looking at going midi with the plugin rather than reading levels, but can't find any reasonable documentation for midi in vb.net. I haven't given up by any means, it's just going to take a bit to figure out how to make it work is all.

The idea of using AHK to read midi from traktor is interesting, please do share!

[MiL0]

okay, so the way it'd work is Traktor outputs VU meter midi data to a virtual midi port. An AHK script would receive this midi data, convert it and then output it as qwerty keystrokes. Your LCDSmartie plugin would then receive the keystrokes and display the appropriate volume level on the LCD screen. Each 'cell' on the LCD screen would be set to receive a particular keystroke, meaning that you could light each 'cell' by just typing on a normal qwerty keyboard. Does that make sense? lol

Anyway, writing the AHK script would be relatively simple - there's a midi input library for AHK here:

http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic30715.html

I'd be more than happy to help with this... especially as I've got two LCD screens on there way from China as I write this! I probably wouldn't have bothered buying them if I wasn't able to use them as VU meters (but I'm sure I'll find a use for them if this doesn't work).

[MiL0]

okay, well I've thrown together a very quick proof-of-concept script in AHK (basically just hacked the AHK midi in library)... see the attached zip file below.

if you run midi2keystroke.ahk (or midi2keystroke.exe if you don't have AHK installed) it will appear in your notification area. Right click and choose your midi interface. Now open up notepad and play some notes / press some buttons on your midi keyboard / controller. You should see the letter 'M' appear in the notepad document!

So all you gotta do now is write an LCDSmartie plugin that will accept qwerty keyboard strokes. I'd recommend choosing keyboard strokes such as ctrl+alt+shift+whatever so that it doesn't interfere with any Traktor / Windows shortcuts. If you let me know which keystrokes you've chosen, I'll finish the AHK script so that it outputs different keyboard characters depending on the midi information it receives from Traktor.

[MiL0]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AUQUGt6wlQ

Also, there should be quite an easy way to display track names / artist on the LCD screen... LCD Smartie has a display bmp option... just a case of using AHK to take a screenshot, convert it to monochrome and then display it on the LCD

[thelpb]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AUQUGt6wlQ

Also, there should be quite an easy way to display track names / artist on the LCD screen... LCD Smartie has a display bmp option... just a case of using AHK to take a screenshot, convert it to monochrome and then display it on the LCD

Well im going to install the second LCD like I had planned. But share the VU meter!

[MiL0]

But share the VU meter!

http://www.djtechtools.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18512