We get letters! Well, email. I don’t actually get letters in the mail. But I do get email. So here are some of the correspondences I’ve had with people who have emailed me.
Iz asked me:
is there any possibility to develop a specific device, in the future, based on my needs and design ?
If such a project was remotely possible (as i don’t know who else to turn myself to), what would be the costs involved in making it happen ?
I guess it would vary with the difficulty of realization and various factors like the time you’d spent on r&d etc… but i’d want to know what costs i’m facing…
to which I said:
I’ve spent thousands of dollars developing beatseqr, just in terms of cost of tools, hardware, software, prototyping circuit boards, silicones, cases, and buying parts. I can’t even begin to imaging how much time I’ve spent on it. Hundreds of hours, easily.
I’d plan on $500 if you’re going to build something from scratch yourself. At first the bits and pieces don’t seem like they’ll add up to that much… it just seems to creep in that direction if you haven’t done it before. I’d plan on it costing more if you want someone else to build something for you from scratch. 🙂 prototyping is pretty expensive, which is why I’m trying to sell copies of my project… All that work I did to figure out how to build one, might as well do to a bit more work and try to make more copies.
Keep in mind that the beatseqr firmware is open source, and there are/will be at least one hackable pin on the circuit board that you would be able to use to add a midi port if I can’t get one into the project natively. I’m kind of shooting for that, even if i can’t figure out how to make the box use it immediately… the firmware is always upgradable and either myself or hopefully someone else with a beatseqr will be able to write a version of the firmware that would have a reasonably accurate clock that could be used for midi/sync clock. That’s what’s cool about beatseqr… it’s open and upgradable. If you have a better idea for how it should work, you can modify the program on the arduino… and hopefully share your great idea with other beatseqr users.
Alternatively, you could take a look at a couple of other resources:
livid has what appear to be some really nice DIY things if you’re going to build one copy of a project.
http://shop.lividinstruments.com/builder.htmlSparkfun has some stuff too:
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9598
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9108
http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9595It’s hard to believe, but the electronics are the easy part of building a controller. the case, knobs, and interface stuff are the hard part. Nothing’s impossible, though! I’m not a professional product designer or electrical engineer. When you’re adequately motivated, you can really achieve anything. Don’t try to solve all of the problems at once, just keep solving small parts of the problem and before you know it, you can start to see the overall picture. If I can do it, you can too. 🙂
-steve
Justin ask me:
I recently found your posting on all fader types for your project. Quite a nice piece. Not really a digital guy myself.
I recently bought a old disco mixer, a GLI 5990. In short, I’ve been searching the web for replacement parts, specifically the slide faders with LED’s built in. I found your site with the crazy big picture of sliders, and you have the one pictured, I think, that I’ve been looking for.
I was wondering if you could be of help. I just don’t know what to search for when it comes to faders with the LED in the center of the slider. My old dj mixer used 2 of the faders for cue pan and volume.
Sorry to ask this question out of the clear blue, but I’m just trying every avenue I can find. This mixers over 30 years old and I don’t know if these types of parts are available anymore.
Thanks Steve,
Justin
Ugh, this is a problem I have trying to source parts for beatseqr.
Hey Justin… Thanks for writing! Finding an exactly matching replacement part for *any* gear, regardless of age, can be a frustrating experience.
Mouser has some. Digikey has some as well. I don’t know if they’ll fit, or if the pin configuration will work, or if they’ll have the right resistance, curve type, etc. There are an awful lot of parameters to watch out for. making some careful measurements of the part you need to replace, and then reading the data sheets for candidate parts is going to be key.
- http://www.mouser.com/ slide potentiometers
- http://digikey.com, search for “slide potentiometer”
good luck!
-steve
Keep those emails coming. 🙂