Hello Robert and gang! I had purchased an Nektar Aruba a while back for a great price of $129. When using it I was longing for a few features that I was actually going to modify the Aruba to get but decided against this in favor of a docking station idea instead. I’ve found that since I working on music in my studio with low, soft lighting, seeing some of the unlit buttons on the Aruba was near impossible so I wanted a light but there was nothing out there that I could use that worked on an XLR jack. All of the XLR lights where 12 volt and I wanted this thing to run on 5vDC USB buss powered so I had to make this. That wasn’t easy but I found a really great quality USB LED gooseneck light with adjust beam spread (flood to spot), adjustable color, Cold as hell to warm white and dimmable. I made some parts to adapt this light to an XLR type connector. Good stuff.
The whole unit is powered by the USB buss of the computer but if you have more of a draw it can be powered by an external power supply too between 9 and 30 volts. The unit is made of Birch and Oak. The Birch is 1.5 inches thick (4cm) with a width of 18 inches (48cm) and a depth of 13 inches (33cm) but this is because of the size of the Aruba.
It’s covered with a food grade epoxy of about 2.5mm thick. In this version, since I did this all by hand it’s not perfect but my next one will be. I don’t think I would use epoxy again for this because a lot of babysitting has to be done as it cures…but it is super durable for sure.
Also, on the next one I build I would make sure for right handed people the light control panel/USB B jack and the USB hub would be swap to the opposite side they are on right now. This would make the cable runs shorter and offer a little bit more flexibility for the placement of the cursor control and pad controller.
I added four, screw on rubber feet for table top use but it also has the necessary mortis’ for use with a snare drum stand…which is the way I use it. The USB hub has a 10ft USB cord that plugs into the PC and two USB 1ft jumpers to provide power to the USB B type connector for the light, the drum pad controller and a wireless trackball/mouse. I was considering building these things for the beat production and finger drumming community but if I did that I would automate the process a bit on a CNC machine. I just thought I would show you guys this thing.
This is a video link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/2CjqKHj2CYFHpnXKA
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Looks great! Do you have a photo from the front? Like how it looks when you’re playing it?
Also, when hitting the pads, how stable is the whole thing? Does it vibrate a lot or is it immutable?
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Hey Rob!! Thank you. I’ll upload more photos. It only allows five at a time. I’ll do that now. It’s pretty stable actually. Since the snare stands are robust it’s pretty good. I guess not as stable as a table top but very good I think. I’ll get you a video too. I love this thing!
Like I mentioned before, for right handed people I would make sure the lighting controls/USB B plug and USB hub would be swapped to the opposite side they are on right now.
The stability is more related to the quality of snare stand you have but this one is pretty good. It doesn’t move anymore than it did when I was just clamping the Aruba into the snare stand directly. Also the snare stand is inside the dock over 1.25 inches (3cm) so I can pick the thing up by the dock and shack it as hard as I can and it won’t come out. If I tipped it over and it crashed to the floor it wouldn’t come out either.
Here is a link to a video. https://photos.app.goo.gl/QEBQpakbTPyg4Wjg7
It’s very stable but a better quality snare stand I’m sure would be better. This is a piece of junk I bought for $15 used from a music store about 20 years ago.
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Impressive! Nice creation you’ve built for yourself 
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Hey thanks Duncan. It’s a work in progress and not perfect but the rest of them will be better. I do love this thing!
Thank you for your positive comment!
Chris
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Everything starts somewhere and the fact that you openly critique your own work in the video, speaks volumes of how thorough you are. It’s great to hear you thinking of improvements and variations for right/left hand people.
I’ve just started my finger drumming journey and can just fit my Maschine Mikro in front of my laptop on my small desk. The room I’m in isn’t that big and has another desk for work and my guitar gear so don’t have room, but something like this would be great if I did.
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Hey Duncan. Thank you very much for the compliment. I don’t mind throwing myself under the bus if it’s not as good as I know I can make it. Thanks for noticing. I have been doing prototyping for most of my adult life, so I guess the passion is easy…it’s the methods that can be hard. It seems like every project requires some out of the box thinking because each presents a new challenge. It’s fun though.
You know as I read you comment I just thought for the first time, “if you placed the PadDock on a table rather than a snare stand would you need thing (docking station) in the first place?” Hmmm. Gets me thinking. Can you think of any other features that might be useful?
Good luck on your journey with finger drumming Duncan. How did you get started and what were you doing before you decided to go in this direction? I think Robert got some good stuff going on here. I think we are all in great hands. He seems like a really great guy with very practical ways of teaching. I’m glad to be here.
I too am new to it but it comes much more natural than any other method I’ve used over the last 30 years. I have a big challenge coming up soon. I wrote a song back in 1998 that is a pretty hard piano based song with a kick butt sax solo and some major drumming. This song will be the first that I use finger drumming on. So as I prepare and relearn the entire piano part and get myself seasoned to play it again I know that the drumming is going to be a challenge…it should be fun and interesting!
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Remember that if at any point you feel lost or that maybe you’re not in good hands anymore, you should let me know. I’ve had students at some point questioning my pad layout or what the best thing to learn next was and sometimes they’re right (for what they need). So yeah… I think I made a pretty well rounded curriculum, but for those moments where one size does not fit all I’m also here in person.
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Nice, definitely sounds like fun. Not sure I could say I’ve ever made a prototype, but I do like to do the best with what I’ve got available at times especially when I go camping with my boys so they see that you don’t always need everything. I do a fair bit of data extraction, coding and automation in my job so get to be creative in that aspect which is what I enjoy.
I’m probably too early in my journey to think of other features other than something that bugs me with all my music hobbies and that’s cables - got them everywhere and feels impossible to have a “clean” setup so whatever cable management with minimal cable runs would be good.
Not sure how I bumbed into finger drumming. I think I’d been looking at so many music creation related videos that YouTube eventually showed me one of Rob’s videos and I was immediately interested. I mainly play guitar, then bass and was starting to use EZDrummer 3 to get drum beats to hopefully make some music. I love the rhythm aspect of playing bass and thought drums might be a great addition. Don’t have enough room for an drumkit and saw lots of great beats being made the more I looked into finger drumming. Waiting a while to see if the interest remained and it did, so got the Maschine Mikro Mk3 for my birthday.
Think I’m going ok and intend to keep adding to my learning diary I started on this message board.
I played the tuba in my school band back in the 90’s for a year and the head music teacher was almost begging me to stay on. My teenage self didn’t really like the early morning practice and most of my friends were playing basketball or video games so they drew me away from music. The teacher said I showed great potential, but that didn’t help. I dabbled in guitar a few times and have finally been a bit more consistent in recent years. Don’t get heaps of time to play though.
That’s pretty exciting, hope it goes well.
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