.....Introduction.....

At the turn of the millennium, few would have thought of DJs spinning with anything other than vinyl. Not even the first decade of the 21st century has passed, and the DJing landscape has changed.

Take one of the world’s greatest and most respected DJs, Sasha, a former DJ Mag winner and won critical acclaim alike with his sets and productions. Sasha shocked the world in late 2004 when announcing that his DJ equipment would be a laptop and an external audio controller. Many thought it was a ludicrous concept, however many DJs have adopted the same setup, such as Paul van Dyk for example.

But what about the average jocks or those bedroom DJs who wish to follow the technological trends of their idols? Is there a viable option to purchase software and an audio controller for a reasonable price?

The answer, is MAVEN. There are a lot of stories and legends within the community, suggesting telling that it cost an astronomical 10,000 pounds, was made specially for Sasha and it has an ultra modern technology inside protected by patent rights. I was so interested, that I started to search the internet for some information about this technology.

I found a website: midibox.org, with plentiful information regarding midi-controllers. This is how I conceived my idea, to construct my own midi-controller, based on pictures of Sasha’s controller, was the same abstraction as the project of supersonic airplane Concorde in 1956 for the British and French engineers.

.....MyWay.....

Did I give up? No! I started with Ableton Live, the same software which Sasha uses in his sets. After a few days, I learned how to use buttons of Maven in theory and I compiled my first drawings, in June 2006.

In October I decided how many buttons and faders required, and I ordered circuit boards from Germany, to make the mounted electronic circuits, which are the basis for the whole controller. After installing that part it was time to purchase faders and buttons. It was very easy theoretically – you go to the shop with electronic staff and buy what you need. Unfortunately it wasn’t so easy to construct. 96 buttons highlighted with diods were bought in the internet shop after few days of researching. My idea was that my controller needs to have 100 mm length and faders in size 45 mm. Only one company named ALPS makes such products in a good quality, but it was impossible to buy in Poland.

I spent lots of nights searching that in the Internet. I found it at last in… USA! I had nothing more to do but order the package from USA. It was the end of December 2006 and I thought, if I had the mounted electronic circuits and faders it would be easier now and I would end my project in a few weeks. I was very wrong, unfortunately.

For the next few weeks I was camped at my computer with a slide caliper in my hand, designing the whole cover and circuit boards in AutoCad. It is not easy to design for the first time without any professional help. You have to count on your intuition – how many mm of width should have the path on circuit board or how wide should be the cover. Fortunately, I met kind people, who gave me some excellent advice.

At the beginning of February I sent my projects to companies, which had to change the month of my hard work to next fragment of the “puzzles”.

.....Piece2Piece.....

After about two weeks I received the laser-cut cover. I could see how it would resemble my controller. I grabbed the sandpaper immediately and polished the cover for two days and afterwards, painted it with black and white car enamel in spray. After some problems I also received my ordered circuit boards.

In the beginning of April I started to set up the whole controller. First I had to solder faders, conduits and other things in over 1500 places (!). It had to be made very carefully and concisely. After making all solders I was convinced that the only thing to do is to start the layout and connect it to the computer. It is very easy to presume that I miscalculated again.

Both processors/microcontrollers PIC 18, which are the heart of the whole layout, had to be programmed in the right way. It was hard for me, because programming was the worst memory from my studies. This project was a very big challenge for me and I still had no certainty if I could activate the controller which should transfer signals to computer. It was a personal economic risk from the outset – I sold my turntables to finance this project. I couldn’t give up in that moment.