Learn How to Use Your Raspberry Pi for DJ’ing
If you don’t have the money or space for a laptop, you can use a Raspberry Pi with a MIDI controller to spin some jams.
The equipment of choice for DJs has evolved over the years. In the early days of DJ’ing as an art of its own, it was common to just have a pair of turntables and a basic mixer. These days many DJs use laptops to mix tracks digitally in real time. But if you don’t want to spend the money on laptop or don’t have the space for it, you can use a Raspberry Pi with a MIDI controller to spin some jams.
As you likely know, Raspberry Pi makes small single-board computers with Arm processors. Early models weren’t particularly powerful and were really only good for basic computing tasks. But today, newer models offer impressive power in a small and inexpensive package. Those models are even powerful enough to run the free, open source DJ software Mixxx. When combined with a MIDI DJ controller, this will give you the ability to scratch records like a pro.
For this system, you’ll need either a Pi 3B+ or 4, a microSD card, a decent power supply, a screen for the Raspberry Pi, and a MIDI controller. The display used in this example is an Adafruit 2.8” PiTFT capacitive touch screen and the MIDI controller is an Akiyama Pulsar DJ controller. All you need to do is install Raspbian with Desktop (no recommended software), configure your screen, and install Mixxx. Set it up to autorun on startup so you don’t need to attach a keyboard or mouse. Once your MIDI controller is mapped, you’ll be able to start DJ’ing like a master!
