Yes, sometimes the greatest DIY projects are built not from scratch but from the cannibalized bits of other, less-brilliant controllers. Together, these pieces become greater as a whole, from bland and boring to bizarre and fantastic.

Case in point: Devin aka “mzo” writes us with his Cyrillic-emblazoned custom controller creation for VJ control. The project was built by the talented Craig Komega (more on his work coming soon — he’s the maker of the awesome Komegatone).

The controller is built from modifying 3 off the shelf controllers (M-Audio Trigger Finger, Belkin Nostromo n52 gamepad and the old Mixman Dm2) into a custom made, laser etched box with a cold-war soviet space station theme (hence the name Def-con, also Definable-controller because of its flexibility in programming). The computer still sees the thing as 3 seperate and unmodified devices and I program them for my vj’ing using the respective software for each (although the dm2 to midi software isn’t from the manufacturer). This also makes the controller suitable for a wide variety of applications including dj’ing.

I currently use this controller with Vjamm, Resolume, Live and Traktor with custom control setups for each.

I was curious about more details of how the controller mappings were used in action, so Devin sent more.

Full-size image download of above

No videos, but he did write up some other impressions: