Diy all-in-one (denon prime 4, pioneer whatever)

General Discussion
#1

In a few hours I should be picking up a used 4 channel controller which gave me a bunch of new ideas. Several users have hobbled together older raspberry pis and limited graphics, or similarly limited setups with tablets, but how about something as functional as the contemporary all-in-one units?

Tablet or advanced single board pc with touch screen + hdd + controller is effectively the same as the commericial offerings. My understanding of earlier raspberry pis, was that they had a hard time with the waveform display. The 4th generation has solved that? Most/many dj controllers have ample room inside the casing to mount a sata drive and r pi sized computer. If cooling is necessary, a hole can be cut out and mini fan installed.

My goal is is to have just a single cable coming out of the controller connecting to the display device, and one for power, along with the required audio output. The display would show 4 deck information. Name, level meter, bpm, key, keylock, waveforms, time elapsed/remaining, but not info which the controller shows, like hot cues, grid, sync, etc. Engaging the library controller features would switch the display view from tracks to library, with touchscreen keyboard. Perhaps a few other touchscreen buttons need ot be added, to access menu, fx settings, etc.

The amount of work probably doesnt make sense if buying a new controller, but for anyone with an old but higher quality controller, one could save an easy grand and ditch the laptop.

#2

An ‘advanced tablet’ would be my way to go in terms of simplicity and maintainability, even though R’Pis seem to be capable properly rendering waveforms nowadays.
“simplicity and maintainability” because I’m not aware of cased, reliable budget displays with 12" and bigger, and in my experience hooking up the controller, display and storage is always kinda error-prone.

Regarding ‘advanced tablet’ maybe something like a Microsoft Surface could work. I just noticed Surface Pro 3 (from like 2015 and later) with Intel i7 are rather ‘cheap’ now and I had good experience with one of those back then (except the ususal “Windows experience” of course, but it should be possible to make it run with an low-latency Linux, maybe even with a rt-preempt kernel).
Don’t know if that still fits the low-budget constraint here (in case that’s relevant to you), but for sure it would be much cheaper than an all-in-one controller.

#3

i currently use a 17" laptop and am in dire need of downsizing! If Denon and pioneer can get away with 10" and 7" displays, then I think I can, too. I started out on turntables, and have used CDJs a few times. The mixer interface is more important for me than seeing big waveforms.

Budget is a factor. I was just given a reloop terminal mix 2 for free. Something like the odroid c4 and raspad 3 (10.1" screen and casing) plus an appropriately sized hdd will cost me something like 300€. A Surface or the like could be cool, but I’ll still need a hdd. I’m not spending money until spring, so something to think about.

#4

is 2gb ram enough? I think I’d probably be more comfortable with 4, which does limit which used tablets I might find

#5

Excellent controller. if the pushbuttons are still working :wink: had to refubish two of those
And it has indeed some space for a RPi, and a M.2 SSD

raspad looks nice! didn’t know that

#6

the left track load button is a lil buggy, but so far everything looks and feels great. While it technically can play 4 tracks at a time, I was under the impression that it was the mix 4. It’s an upgrade over the numark mixtrack pro I’ve been borrowing, but I really want 4 discrete mixer channels. Deals on those are far and few between, so unless I build something out of used parts and an arduino laying around or get gifted a really basic controller, im stuck :confused:

If I go the ras pad route, I’m considering to try to put the hdd in there and leave the controller as it is. Fewer cables, as the ras pad is designed to be a stand-alone tablet.

If I end up building some arduino frankenstein thing, I might just go for a small laptop. Not exactly what I want, but fewer experiments.

#7

I also have the TM4, hehe. Also bought 2nd hand and refurbished some knobs and stuff, put Croma caps on. Just looked it up, here in Germany you can now get it for €120-150 in appearantly good condition

#8

where in germany???

#9

ahm…aynwhere. found on that ebay 2nd hnd portal. just looked on ebay because I was surprised by that as well
(would stash a few of those for fellwow DJs :wink:
on ebay (with buyers protection) it’s even cheaper if your lucky, around 100eur + shipping = 110€ max

where do yo live? could get you one in case sellers don’t ship there

#10

but currently there’s none on ebay. just looked up the sold items to get an idea about the usual price

#11

I live in berlin! havent found anything on kleinanzeigen or ebay.de that low. The tm2 just came up over an extended social network this past weeked, so I havnt exactly been searching long.

edit: there is one locally going for 195€
I’m not sure what kind of budget I really want to try. if I end up spending 500+ for some used stuff which works well enough, I’ll be wondering if I could instead of have spent a bit more money and gotten the real deal. Thomann sells the prime 4 for 1800, but I’d see if I could get around retail pricing if I go for something new

#12

that looks really nice.
indicator for being intact (not being ab/used too much) is that you can still read all button labels
125€ https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/reloop-terminal-mix4/1603613966-172-4771

#13

it does! I need a month to think about it. For now, I’ll enjoy the lowly 2

#14

I know this this is the wrong thread for it, but have you done any further mapping for the Crates, View, and Prep buttons? I’d like them to toggle viewing/show/hiding the Crates, Library, and AutoPlay folder (for selecting tracks during a set which might be played later on, like lifting up records in the old days)

#15

If you mean jumping to those items directly: no that is not possible as of now.
or do you mean to maximize the library?

I --personally-- mapped the 4 buttons above the encoder to do all sorts of stuff, with Shift it’s 8 buttons :slight_smile:

#16

Yea. hot keys for grabbing tracks. Oh, well. I had forgotten about the need to populate the auto play folder. Would it be possible to use one of those buttons to add tracks to it?

I found a post of yours outlining some of the scripting. Would it be possible to share it?

#17

take a look at the Mixxx controls list in the manual: the are some AutoDjAdd… controls.

Sure I can share my mapping. Thing is, I have to fix it first because right now it sometimes locks up the Trax knob, probably due to some timed function not resetting some vars I suspect. Over the years I have added some longpress functions, some button combos for cloning decks, change track rating etc, all stuff that has accumulated but could probably have been built easier (or at least with less code) using components or something.
That said, I can try to fix it on the weekend – or just try to comment out the rating functions, may that works.

#18

btw I’ll probably buy a TM4 next days. Feels like a good opportunity, seems like some guys got new gear for xmas and give away the oldies… -_o

#19

thx. i can read some code, but am not very practiced in writing it. My skills lay more in track selection, lol.

I’m very tempted to buy one, but am curious if waiting a little bit could mean making a better offer.

#20

If anyone out there wants to face the pain and build an open-source all-in-one running Mixxx I’d suggest the Pi4 8GB RAM version. You want a beefy machine to handle the hassle of running a real-time patched Linux kernel that will lock memory like a real hogger.