I’m going to describe in this post how I assembled it. It won’t be the last post about the nifty device as the creator also thought about its extensibility. But therefore you should have a clue about what you’re doing.

1. Unpack

2. Prepare the bottom plate

Insert the screws in the bottom plate, turn the whole thing around and place the little spacers on top of it.

3. Attach the circuit board

Yeah, attach it and the place the big spacers on top of it!

4. Prepare the cover plate

Optional: Paint the bottom of the cover plate. Spraying on it might yield the best results, but it’s up to your imagination. My girlfriend will do it hopefully for me as my drawing skills are kind of … abstract.

Push the transparent rods through the cover plate and affix a black rubber-ring on each of them. Push them firmly to the top otherwise the little rods will clatter all the time.

5. Attach the cover plate

Attach the cover plate to the rest. Make sure you are attaching it in the right direction if the rods are exactly above the transparent little LEDs just like in the picture.

6. Tighten the cover plate

Use the allen key to tighten the cover plate to the rest.

7. Pound in the arcade buttons

It’s time to press the arcade buttons into the holes of the cover plate. You can’t do much wrong, because they only fit into them in one direction. They have to be fit in the notches looking like a ‘V’. You’ll eventually have to pull apart the connection-pins of the buttons a little. At least I had to do this.

Press the buttons with some force into the holes. If you are too timid they’ll just pop out of the holes. You’ll notice that they sit good when you hear a click. If you hear a crack you may have used too much power

Optional: There are some pinches you can glue at the bottom plate so the acrylic-plate doesn’t become scratched.

You’re masterpiece should look similar to this when you finished all these steps:

8. Feel the penny arcade

Attach it to your PC or Mac and enjoy the nice intro. Now use the Midi-Fighter in the audio-software of your choice.

You can find the official Traktor Pro Mapping in the DJTechTools-forums.

You can also find a manual about the menu-mode of the Midi-Fighter there which lets you change some settings like the velocity of the buttons

P.S. The official video also explains very well how to assemble the Midi-Fighter:

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Demo

Although it has lots of flaws and shouldn’t be used in a live environment, I’ve created a small video to show you what is possible as of now. Please note that the plattern-support is broken in Traktor Version 1.24. I’m using version 1.23 in the video. I recommend to view it in HD.

Downloads

Features

• mixer-section fully working
• track-browsing-section fully working
• most loop-features are working
• transport-controls including cue-buttons working
• HID-pitch-fader and pitch-bend working
• platter working (only until Traktor-version 1.23)
• Start- and stop time and reverse-mode for the platter working

Known Issues

• Bleep not working
• Strip search working unreliable

plattern-related

• Cue-points work unreliable if the plattern isn’t spinning
• Platter control is always at 0% pitch
• Wheel assignments have to be learned every session
• Start Time adjustment only works intermittently
• Turning the motor off while Playback is engaged results in a pause in playback

Related posts:

1. Traktor Pro Launcher – Launches different Traktor Pro versions
2. Reverse-playback in Traktor Pro
3. Tools and Apps for Traktor Pro

I’ve been suffering under Microsoft’s non-existant window-management while using only one screen  for nearly a decade so I decided it was time to look for some tool which puts a window always on top. After trying a gazillion who all promised relief, it was the open-source-tool Filebox eXtender, which helped me to sleep straight through the nights again. It helps you cluttering your title-bars even more, by (optionally) adding buttons with the following functions to it:

• keep window always on top
• roll-up the window
• a list of recently used folders
• a list with self-determined shortcuts, folder or files

There is a load of options for each of these functions, so you can spice it up to your taste.

Only the always on top thing appealed to me, because Windows 7 already comes with the folder-stuff on board and I’m not a big fan of the roll-up-feature.

Attention: The additional icons might be misplaced in some applications like the Office 2007-Suite, but overall they’re most of the time at the right spot.

I would like to pin a window via keyboard-shortcut, but am too not willing time to include that feature on my own. So if anyone knows a tool which can do this AND displays a nice always-on-top-icon in the title-bar I would be all for it.

Related posts:

1. Windows 7 – enabled installing all versions from one DVD!

This entry is rather for German readers, but maybe someone of you finds it…god knows why…helpful as well.

The droid sadly has no umlaut-keys. There are 2 alternative ways to type these in using the keyboard.

method 1 – press a,o,u,s for a while

If you press the key corresponding to its umlaut longer than 1 second, you will see this menu:

As you can see it contains a lot of funny characters.
Either press the one of your choice on the screen or navigate to it using the 5-way d-pad and finally press on its middle button.

There is however a second way to achieve this a little faster

method 2: Shift,Alt und then U

Press either Shift or ALT, then to one of them you didn’t press. The textmarker changes after pressing ‘u’ into two dots:

If you press a,o or u the corresponding umlaut will appear. Writing ‘ß’ is even easier. Just press Shift, Alt, then ’s’

I doubt that this will work on Droid’s. It would be nice if anyone could confirm this.

I’m likely to build an app soon making the whole process a bit easier because umlauts are needed fairly often in the German language.

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It hit me like a ton of bricks when I received an e-mail in december saying that Jumplist-Launcher is one of the winner-applications of the category ‘Early Bird’. YEAAAAH! The count of submissions must’ve been pretty low for this category because entries had to be submitted in August 2009, which was ca. 2 months before the regular end of the contest, but who cares about that.

Today the prize finally arrived and is going to be a good paperweight, reminding me that there’s still a lot to do for the Jumplist Launcher.

Next week, I’ll post an entry about the Jumplist Launcher-plans for 2010.

I also want to thank  Hans Christian Løberg for allowing me to use his icon for the Jumplist Launcher.

Related posts:

1. Jumplist-Launcher Update Version 5 – drag’n'drop and interchanged Icons
2. Jumplist-Launcher v7 released – default action now possible
3. Jumplist-Launcher v6 released – command-line arguments and more