MoHoyt.com » Arduino Drum Kit http://www.mohoyt.com/blog I now walk into the wild... Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:00:04 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Testing of my Arduino drum kit… http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/06/19/testing-of-my-arduino-drum-kit/ http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/06/19/testing-of-my-arduino-drum-kit/#comments Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:20:29 +0000 Moses Hoyt http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/06/19/testing-of-my-arduino-drum-kit/
  • More on the drum kit
  • Brilliance…
    • ]]>     As i said briefly in the previous post, I got round to testing out how my project involving the Arduino drum kit was going so far. I finished the soldering of all of the wires onto the sensor modules that I had created. This took quite a while, especially with the stupidly long lengths of wire that I went with in the end… oops!

    I attached all of the sensors to the kit using electricians tape, you know, the plasticy kind. This can be seen in some of the photos below.


    I did have a fair amount of trouble getting some of the sensors to stick. Particularly on my snare – the tape didn’t seem to like the Remo Coated Ambassador head, so I used regular clear tape and stuck it to the resonant head which seemed to work just as well and not get in the way! (I’ll get a picture later). The cymbals also weren’t particualrly fond of having tape stuck to them. As you could imagine, it dampened the sound quite a lot, making them sound crap, even more rubbish than usual! The tape didn’t really want to stick to the metal surface very well either, but as it was just a test run, I left it there.

    I had it all set up over two breadboards, one for all of the incoming analogue connections, and the other for the midi port and any other things that I wished to add later. It just made setting up slightly easier as it was clear where everything was going. There were a hell of a lot of wires as I mentioned, so I will be investing in cable ties later to keep the +/- together. It was also fairly important to make sure the wires were colour coded to aid the setting up process.

    The midi port output from the Arduino was sent thru a USB -> Midi adaptor or Midi -> USB adaptor, you can call it what you want! This was connected to my iMac where I used Logic Express and Battery to check that it was all working to some extent and then assign sounds to the specific notes generated by the kit.

    This worked well, although the resonance of the drum heads combined with the ‘ringing’ effect of the piezo caused multiple signals to be generated. This probably is a major thing to work on, but I think it should be fixable by working out a higher ‘trigger’ voltage or getting the Arduino to somehow ignore the two resulting (combined) cosine waves that result from the ringing of the piezo and the vibrating of the drum head. The cymbals turned out to be worse in this aspect as they vibrated more, but a way of (more) dampening could be found…

    The next thing that I’ll probably get round to is either working out how to counter what I will call the ‘ringing effect’ or adding a footswitch to trigger the bass drum and/or the hit hat foot pedal. I had originally bought a decent foot switch from Maplin for a fair amount of money to see how it would work, but I have currently lost it… Once I have sorted out the general ringing I will be able to input into Sibelius, to get the sheet music to be notated in real time, how cool! For the moment though, I am overly impressed in how well it is going!

    Related posts:

    1. More on the drum kit
    2. Brilliance…

    ]]>     http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/06/19/testing-of-my-arduino-drum-kit/feed/ 3     More on the drum kit http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/06/19/more-on-the-drum-kit/ http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/06/19/more-on-the-drum-kit/#comments Mon, 18 Jun 2007 23:29:51 +0000 Moses Hoyt http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/06/19/more-on-the-drum-kit/
  • Update on the Arduino Drumkit
  • Mistake… damn I’m stupid!
    • ]]>     Having just done an exam today, and only having 2 more to go… I finished the soldering (for now at least) on the Arduino Midi Drum Kit that I’m building, and hooked it up to see how it went. Other than a few minor issues I was incredibly surrprised at how well it went. I took some photos, and when I’m not so tired I’ll post them tomorrow!

    Related posts:

    1. Update on the Arduino Drumkit
    2. Mistake… damn I’m stupid!

    ]]>     http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/06/19/more-on-the-drum-kit/feed/ 0     Update on the Arduino Drumkit http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/05/23/update-on-the-arduino-drumkit/ http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/05/23/update-on-the-arduino-drumkit/#comments Wed, 23 May 2007 13:39:27 +0000 Moses Hoyt http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/05/23/update-on-the-arduino-drumkit/
  • Update On Brilliance…
  • Brilliance…
    • ]]>     Here’s a brief update on the Arduino drumkit that I’m building…

    Related posts:

    1. Update On Brilliance…
    2. Brilliance…

    ]]>     http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/05/23/update-on-the-arduino-drumkit/feed/ 0     Update On Brilliance… http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/05/12/update-on-brilliance/ http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/05/12/update-on-brilliance/#comments Sat, 12 May 2007 13:37:14 +0000 Moses Hoyt http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/05/12/update-on-brilliance/
  • Various
  • Apple Tuesday’s again…
    • ]]>     As a slight update to my last post entitled “Brilliance”, here is a rough plan of what I’m going to do in the form of images…

    Related posts:

    1. Various
    2. Apple Tuesday’s again…

    ]]>     http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/05/12/update-on-brilliance/feed/ 3     Brilliance… http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/05/09/brilliance/ http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/05/09/brilliance/#comments Wed, 09 May 2007 16:33:29 +0000 Moses Hoyt http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/05/09/brilliance/
  • Oh well!
  • What a brilliant idea…
    • ]]>     I’ve had a brilliant idea involving a drum kit, Arduino, Sibelius and Battery involving some midi cables and piezos.

    Stay tuned…

    Related posts:

    1. Oh well!
    2. What a brilliant idea…

    ]]>     http://www.mohoyt.com/blog/2007/05/09/brilliance/feed/ 0