Machine Collective controllers – so close!

A few months ago, the internet was blessed with MachineCollective's great idea of a modular MIDI controller. We were very excited at the concept of building our own MIDI controller from pre-prepared cubes of different aspects of live performance. It makes a lot of sense: adapt your controller as your live show/DJ gigs evolve, arrange them in your own personal way depending on how you work and split them up for easy transport to your gigs/shows. Sounds perfect, and they look great to boot.

But, before you smash your piggy bank, here's the real lowdown from Xander at MC:

"The idea behind the Machinecollective project is to help people that are into DIY, synths, physical computing and circuitbending with nice and flexible project enclosures. The modules can function as a modular control surface, but users will have to create the electronics themselves. People can collaborate on these types of projects, we would like to see our forums and wiki become the hub of these developments. Custom panels can be laser-cut on demand for a small extra fee, so nobody should have an excuse for building a nice circuit or synth into a cardboard box ever again ;-)

So to answer your question, we're not planning on directly supporting ableton or other DAW applications, but we will support user contributed projects with our prototyping, engineering and electronics knowledge."

Ah! So close! Of course, for those of you who are handy with a soldering iron, the dream described above could still be a reality, but for the rest of us, we'll have to wait until this awesome idea is brought to life on the shelves. It is still a great idea of course, and the units look fantastic, we just wish, for a little more of our cash, we could get everything pre-assembled and ready to control in our own unique way in no time. What do you think?