Mad Zach from custommidicontrollers.com just released his latest custom creation built for an artist in Australia. This monster has 64 knobs, 32 buttons, 16 LEDs, and 16 sliders. It’s powered by our Brain and has a really nice finish with custom faceplate graphics.

We’ve been following Mad Zach’s work for a while, he’s building his controllers right here in Austin, TX, and we’ve seen this monster in person. This is a great example of a custom controller built to suit the specific needs of an artist, and encompasses the true spirit of our DIY Builder series. Check out his video demo of the controller

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news by Jay

If you’ve been following this blog in the last few months, you have probably seen a lot of chatter regarding the analogness  of our controllers. I am not just talking about faders and knobs either, I am talking about the way our controllers are made too.

Since the release of the builder we have seen some cool analog uses with the Brain. From Fox’s super controller, and my tutorial on using a foot pedal (video below), to touch sensor potentiometers. I will be posting a video next week on using the Brain with the SoftPots from Spark Fun.

There have also been some other developments and discussions on encoders vs. potentiometers, we’d love to hear your feedback on that as well. For the past few months we have been working in the shop on a new custom controller project that we will be announcing soon that was built on the Brain, but in the meantime all I can do is tease you with this picture, and tell you it is awesome.

In fact with a single Brain you can connect 64 individual analog controls. That’s a lot of knobs (or sensors). We haven’t only seen a few controllers reach that limit, and each one gets the same “wow” response. Whether you are controlling Live, adjusting effects in DNA, tweaking your EQ in Reason, or adjusting the volume on your favorite Milli Vanilli track, knobs are important! If you’ve been doing something cool with the analog you Brain, block, or Ohm64, let us know. If you’d like to what we’ve got in the works, well you are just going to have to keep reading this blog!

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news by Jay

I’m building my first controller, because I’m going to be showing our Builder stuff at Maker Faire this weekend (May 22 in San Mateo, CA). I’m not so great at soldering – I’d probably be fired by Travis if I worked on our hardware! I trashed my header, and needed an “undo” for my button breakout board. Consider the toaster oven the hardware equivalent of ctl-Z!

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news, projects by Peter

Since the release of the Builder series of DIY parts and components I have created a handful of video tutorials to assist in the creation of your own controllers. Builder was created to help you in the creation of your own controller with little electronics or building experience, but a desire to learn and create. Many of the tutorials thus far have covered the very basics like wiring a single button so I created a tutorial that covers all the components in the builder series and document the process from start to finish.

This controller has  16 small buttons, 16 rotary potentiometers, 4 faders, and 4 medium buttons. The enclosure for this controller is made out of plastic and is cut from the same material as the spacer layer for our button pads. You can use a number of different materials for your enclosure like wood, metal, plastic, or jell-o. This controller took me about 6 hours from start to finish and the video should give you a really good idea on what it takes to make, assemble, and use your first DIY controller.

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news by Jay

After seeing a lot of discussions and misconceptions about the capabilities and features of the Brain, I decided to make a few small videos simplifying what you can do with the Brain. After we created the Brain we decided to create a line of do-it-yourself modular circuit boards as a lot of people wanted custom controllers with buttons, led, knobs, and faders. This really is only a small part of what you can do with the Brain. By itself the Brain can be used with foot pedals, touch sensors, motion sensors,  pulleys, wii remotes… The list goes on. You are only limited by your desire to experiment.

Recently I picked up a Roland DP-8 foot pedal and wired it to the Brain to work as a potentiometer. I am going to be building a new Viditar with the Brain, and want to add a bunch of  1/4″  jacks to use as controllers for effects. This will allow me to perform with my hands and feet at the same time. I made this simple video tutorial showing how to connect a foot pedal to the Brain. You could even make an entire controller with 64 1/4″ jacks, and have 64 pedals to play with at once. You’d need a lot of feet, but it illustrate the point that no matter how absurd your controller ideas are, the Brain can bring them to life.

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news by Jay