There are plenty of ways to DJ with a laptop and various controller setups. However, if you find hauling around an entire computer can be a bit much, you might like this lighter system from [Daniel Vučinović].
It’s called Pajoniiir, and it’s intended to replace a laptop in the DJ booth. In its place stands an ESP32-P4 microcontroller, hooked up to a 4.3-inch touchscreen display in an off-the-shelf combo from Guition. The ESP32’s twin USB interfaces are hooked up in turn to a Pioneer DDJ-FLX4 controller, and a USB stick carrying a Rekordbox music library. The microcontroller is then also hooked up to a PCM5102A DAC module for audio output.
The ESP32 reads and plays tracks in MP3, WAV, and FLAC formats, responds to commands from the DJ controller, and displays the waveforms and other controls on the touchscreen. It’s doing most of what a laptop would do in this case, only it costs $50 and won’t get stuck in a bootloop for a Windows update 10 minutes before you’re due to go on.
We’ve featured a few good DJ controller hacks over the years, like this Hercules rig that was modded for better scratching.
Thanks for the article and an interesting project
No flack, it will do FLAC!
Flac and wav are supported.
Dyammmn, went over to the repo with my skeptic’s-hat on expecting to find no key-shift features, and i was happily proven wrong! This looks like a seriously impressive addition to diy electronic musicians’ toolkits, assuming the system’s robust and performant enough to let me walk into a gig confident there’ll be no dropouts or glitches. Thanks for the heads-up, I’ll be pouring through this codebase ASAP!
Thanks. For every prerelease and release I have more then 10 hours soak test that runs every combination in mixing. Challenge was to solve high processing with deck1 and deck2 combination of formats…FLAC was pain in the…you know where :D So i needed to make compromise…max size of FLAC track is 50Mb. Cant do more…we must remember that device runs on ESP32
PS I have never read a more personally-relevant last sentence – this exact scenario was the final straw on my old Traktor+Win10 (formerly… Now win 11) rig. Lucky i was 30 minutes early to that show, not just 10, or I’d’ve missed that gig due to the forced “upgrade” :/
As a part time DJ I use the keyboard a lot to pull up music and taylor what I’m playing to what the crowd responds to. Trying to do this with just a touch screen seems like it would be a nightmare. A laptop is not much more to haul around than a touch screen and storage system.
Its a nice project and all but I wouldn’t want to use it for anything other than a play list. If I want to do that there are fully integrated controllers which simplify setup even more.
You didnt understand project
Um… I’m just saying it falls short of my professional requirements
Yes, because its not intended to be profesional equipment. Idea is to make working device so affordable that you wont get mad when you spill bear on beach party.
It doesn’t make coffee either but no-one is grumbling about that.
You wouldn’t get stuck with updates if on the day before such very important event you went into settings and deferred the updates for a week, month or more – it’s possible and it works!
With Windows being the most popular OS on the planet, used mostly by clueless normies, I find that mandatory (long-term unskippable) Windows Update on consumer devices is a necessary evil. Otherwise we’d keep repeating the mistake of Windows XP, Vista and 7 where lusers (not a typo) disabled updates and in turn created a cyber-security nightmare. Hundreds of millions of machines were unpatched for years and were left wide open (like goatse) to all kinds of malware campaigns.
If you enjoy retrocomputing, you’re free to install something ancient like Mandrake Linux or Windows XP SP1. Just don’t cry if you get pwned by some random bot within 5 minutes of plugging into the Internet.
I had a win11 update due for 3 days but I had work so inever put the computer to sleep so it didn’t update, I I realized i need to restart my pc so I delayed updates for a week and restarted just to get stuck behind an update screen for 10 minutes…
This really doesn’t work
Our company-controlled laptops all had an unskippable update in 15 minutes. Some of us were in a teams call with a client! It was not that absolutely important as the update was staggered and it took 3 days for everyone to get it. I fortunately got it just as I was about to head home, so I left the laptop open in my locker.
Well, analogy is good but maybe wrong example. This device doesn’t background processes and tasks so nothing can happen from side.
Thats one hell of an mp3 player bro.
Cool project! The FLX4 already is a USB audio interface though. I’d rather use that to output audio.
I like more screen estate for having a better overview of the tracks, the effects panel open and a bigger playlist view for scrolling and tracks infos, so a small laptop it is is for me.
That said I’d rather ditch Rekordbox. It is sadly the industry standard trap. I used (and really liked) Mixxx with my old controller and even contributed an integration for it, but my new controller was not well supported when I last tried. Rekordbox refuses to even run / locks up on Wine and seems to hate VMs too for no apparent reason so I have that shitty Win11 dual boot on my system just for Rekordbox :(. If you have a solid solution to running Rekordbox on Linux, I’d love to know…
Great project. You say rekordbox and FLX4. I figure any controller should be supported. I have a DDJ-400. Also re rekordbox. Is this the new OneLibrary format because I’m on Djay Pro AI
No. Ddj 400 is also supported. There is guy who forked my repo and he doing port for ddj400. But till end of year most od pioneer, traktor, hercules controllers will be included
no way an esp32 would be fast enuf for live shows? maybe it was enuf in the early 90s
Everything works, only thing i had to limit is size of flac to max 50Mb. But ESP32-P4 works just fine
Using Linux along with kickass Mixxx mixing opensource software is enough to not fear about any update ruining the show. No serious DJ would think of using Windows.
Just insane that a HaD writer doesn’t know about scheduling or pausing updates in windows.
Cool project. Very cool in fact. Sorry the blurb writer cannot stay on task.
I welcome this and moves like it.
Switched to Linux as my main OS lately as now almost all wares I use have native versions.
I do miss serato a bit tho…. Have used mixxx quite a bit over the years and always felt it pretty good but it ain’t great for some reason on my Ryzen ThinkPad and it does kinda feel a bit old…. I even started building a new one based on modern architecture with the idea of it also running on a PI or something to make my controller feel like Hardwear…..
This is a good move and I’ll be keeping an eye on it.
A standard Linux version would also be good.
Nice one
I was wondering if it would work with a flx-10