Light Attack Drums in action

So, Battle Toys played a show last weekend and I got the video footage.  The sounds is a little funky, as we are so darn loud that it overloads the camcorder, which goes into some hi volume compression mode (I think).  Either way, here's the light attack drunk kit in action!

Light attack drum kit has arrived!

It's finally here!  The light attack drum kit.

I needed to change my drum heads, and since I need to take off the heads to install these boards, I decided to put on the new heads.  Now... this marks the second time I've ever replaced drum heads, and I realize they aren't tuned correctly (see video below).   You got any tips?  Let me know!

Of course, installing all this equipment made me realize all the mistakes I made...  I put the sensitivity adjustment on the board that's in the drum, so when I want to adjust the sensitivity I need to take off the drum heads to do it, then without the resonant head, the whole response changes, so I keep taking off and replacing the head... which gets very old, very fast.  Ooops.

So, here's the board inside my floor tom.  I used corner brace to attach the board to the shell, and just screwed it right into the lug for the drum heads.  I got some of those nifty removable 3M cable holders to hold the cable in place and provide some strain relief. 

Oh this reminds me of my second mistake... the corner brace is metal, the board doesn't have a solder mask, and if the board happens to not be aligned correctly, the corner brace will short the power and ground.  Oooops.  Some electrical tape on the leads will be a quick fix.

 I used a 3.5mm audio cable to connect to the control box, and I just ran them out the vent holes in the drums.  Unfortunately, the cable was to thick to fit through the vent hole, so I had to use a blade to trim some of the plastic off of the connector.  Again... ooops.

Anyways... After a few hours getting the bass drum light tested one night, and then another night and another few hours getting the rest of the drums hooked up, I have a working kit!  The sensitivity of the LEDs isn't quite right, especially for the snare.  The snare lights up whenever I hit the bass drum, and the first rack tom stays on far too long.  By the time I'd gone through all of this install, I figured I'd just make a little video and muck around taking off the heads and fine tuning the sensitivity some other day.  By the end of this "testing" the snare drum had quit working...  I'm hoping it's a loose connection, but we'll see.

Anyway, we rounded up some friends around the practice space and invited them in to check it out, which is all of the laughing you'll hear.  Oh, and I'm a professional engineer, not a professional drummer...

Questions? Comments?  Soundularelectronics@gmail.com

Bass Drum ring with LED light strip.

So after my first test, I decided that a few high power LEDs in the base drum wouldn't be sufficient, especially since I've been using black resonant heads.  The Light that escapes the drum shoots out the tiny port hole, or the batter head, since it's clear.  I got a hold of some LED light strips left over from testing (at my place of business) where the controllers had been fried, but the LEDs themselves are still in working order.  I stripped off the controllers and cut them down to 3 LEDs per strip, which is the most I can drive with a 9V supply.  I soldered the strips together, and adhered them around the inside of the ring...

I've been using my phone to record video, and the quality is pretty terrible until the LEDs turn on... sorry...

Tonight... Installing the Bass drum ring and one of the LED lights (make sure it works) inside a Tom.

Woooooooo!  I can't believe how smooth this has been going... Uh oh, I just jinxed myself...

Wooo!

Finally received all the parts to start building the control box.

First step, find a project box that fits my arduino board and mount it in there.

Fancy that, it's already done!  That was quick, eh?   I had to cut a few holes in the side of the case for the USB and power connection.

I'm using 3.5mm audio cables to connect the lights, so I got some panel mount jacks to connect them.

And, of course, labeled them.

Adding the power rail...


Anyway... each of those connectors has a sense pin and a control pin, and they all feed back into the arduino board, which has the brains of the whole operation.

It's a little bit of a rat nest, but I've seen worse...

So I ended up with a control box that handle 6 LED boards... The black LED strip was salvaged from broken electronics.  I have enough to go entirely around the base drum.  I need to figure out how to attach all this stuff to the inside of the drum now...

I'm in need of new drum heads, so I bought a replacements but I've been waiting to put them on so I don't have to muck about taking them on and off again.  Hopefully I can figure out how to get these boards installed and then just rinse and repeat for the others.

Next update is going to be a bass drum lighting up... if all goes to plan :-)

Questions? Comments?  I'm at soundular-electronics@gmail.com

Drum light test

Success!  Since I don't have a drum to make the noise, I have to make mouth noise into the microphone and voila! It lights up!  Now to repeat (1 for each drum) and figure out how to attach the light strips for the bass drum...

Drum lights... taking shape.

It has begun!

I soldered up one board and connected it to an arduino to make sure it works.  We have flashies!

Not the type you'd see at mardi gras, but flashies none the less!

Next step, add the microphone to the mix so the LED flashes when I make a sound.

PC boards

My boards arrived today...

Cymbals

So... what's the best thing to do with cracked cymbals?  I have a little collection now and I am not sure what to do with them.  Anyone out there ever cut down a cracked cymbal and turned it into a splash or something?

How did you do it?  email me at soundularelectronics@gmail.com

Light attack drum boards.

Good news!   I designed and ordered boards for the drum kit.

I'm still considering this a prototype board, so I got 3 of these boards, no solder mask or silkscreen from express PCB for 50 bucks.  Not bad, eh?  I'll get a total of 6 complete boards.  I added some hooks in there so I can use either a microphone or a piezo transducer, and I can either use an LED soldered to the board or wire out the leads to external LEDs.

This is happening, oh yes... it is.

Light attack drum kit

This ams the breadboarded circuit... because... why not?

On the first day, I gave my drums light.

So... have you ever seen a drum kit light up when it's played?

Because seriously... if you have, I want to know about it.

Okay I just googled it and found this.  Those sons of....  oh wait... that drum set in the video costs thousands of dollars.  It was expensive enough that they don't even post the price online... which I've learned over the years means that it's usually so freaking expensive that they don't want you to konw price.
You actuall need to download a PDF of their prices.  I'm not sure about the sizes of those drums in the video, but the drum shells alone cost over $5,000.  As far as I can tell, that doesn't include the lights or the controller, which I would probably guess are another few thousand.

That being said...  I want something unassuming... You see some dude setting up drums... looks like a normal set... then BAAMMMM.  Beams of light are shooting out of it... I imagine it something like the final scene from that Indiana Jones movie... you know the one I mean.   Yup, that one.  Also, I think with a few hundred bucks, at least that much is in my reach.

I got some ideas up my sleeve, and the first one involved an electret microphone into the + input of  comparator.  I use a pot connected to the - input to set a trigger threshold.  Then I connect the output of the comparator to the gate of a mosfet to turn on the LEDs,  I put an RC circuit on the gate of the mosfet to control how the LED decays.   Piece of cake, right?  Not exactly... it took a few hours and some other parts, but I got one built on a breadboard and threw it in the bass drum as a test.

I asked Battle Toys guitarist to play a simple beat while I messed with the threshold and decay rate and was able to find a setting that decayed fast enough to catch all of the bass drum hits.  I also had to raise the sensitivity quite high in order to only trigger once on each hit.  Evidently a bass drum contains some serious pressure waves.... who knew?

Gary Gnu knew, and John Sununu knew...  (Thanks, P.C.)

Anyway... a proof of concept design for the light attack drum kit.

More to follow!