Skip to content
← All builds

62 BAR: a Raspberry Pi DJ instrument with a motorised platter

Gadget, Hard

A small DJ instrument with a spinning platter you can grab, a touchscreen, six keys, an encoder and a fader, built around a Raspberry Pi 5 in a printed nylon case. An AI agent took it from concept to CAD and parts orders.

View build on X ↗Share on X

nim wanted a mini DJ controller in the style of Teenage Engineering, with a real platter to grab. The post says the agent (Astra) generated a concept image, sourced the parts, read Chinese datasheets, built the CAD model, ordered everything and made a Blender animation showing how it goes together. The build notes also credit Codex for the motor firmware and the app.

Inside are a Raspberry Pi 5 (2GB), a Waveshare 3.5-inch touchscreen, a SparkFun brushless motor and controller for the platter, an ESI GIGAPORT eX USB audio interface, two Adafruit NeoKey 1x4 boards with six switches fitted, an Adafruit rotary encoder and an Adafruit NeoSlider. The keys, encoder and fader hang off I2C, each on its own address. The enclosure, faceplate, carrier and platter are MJF-printed PA12 nylon.

It's a prototype. The builder has assembled the printed parts and is still tuning how the motor feels, along with fixes that only showed up during assembly, like USB clearance and platter alignment. The next version aims for fewer parts. The post doesn't link code or CAD files.

Interfaces

Ideas to try with it

Our ideas, not the builder's claims.

  1. Ask your agent for a parts list around one module you already own
  2. Prototype the controls in a desktop emulator before ordering prints
  3. Map the six keys to cue points in your own Pi audio app
Source
@eminimnim on X
Posted
2026-09-10
Builder
@eminimnim
Built with
Raspberry Pi 5

Links

Guides: Codex and ChatGPT hardware projects people actually built

What to build next

Builds that share a board, robot or agent with this one.