Comments on: Rock band kick pedal

By: DoYouLikeFishDicks?

DoYouLikeFishDicks? — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:02:47 +0000

hey you know what you should do?
you should use a double kick with that.

By: Alphathon

Alphathon — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:24:04 +0000

@Rschmidt: Thats good news! anyway, I can’t try it myself as I have the PS3 version so mine just works as-is (minus velocity sensitivity, which makes it just a little unresponsive)

By: Rschmidt

Rschmidt — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:12:56 +0000

@alphathon: Oh, and Carl Kenner is in that thread, talking about writing a new version of GlovePIE that integrates this stuff, so it looks like I was wrong about it being out of development!

By: Rschmidt

Rschmidt — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:03:21 +0000

@alphathon: Yeah, Carl Kenner hasn’t updated anything on his site in a long time, but he never specifically said he was stopping development. The post on the latest update of Glovepie, 0.3.0, says it’s got some wiimote calibration / IR bugs but that a patch should be out ‘shortly’. It never actually came out, at least to my knowledge.

However… as far as the ‘not registering’ stuff goes, what I meant to say was that GlovePIE doesn’t see it as a connected extension, and can’t initialize the device because it doesn’t know what it is or whether it’s plugged in properly. Using the ‘detect input’ tool in GlovePIE doesn’t do anything because the drum kit is still waiting for something. However… good news, you can always count on the Frets On Fire community to hack the everliving crap out of something.

Check this thread out: http://www.fretsonfire.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=29037&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Apparently, it works, but I haven’t had the chance to try it yet. I’ll blog it up if I do, of course.

I don’t think this is exactly a case of the developers specifically making it hard for us; it’s just that without a little bit of knowledge about how it works (where it writes in the Wiimote memory, for example) it’s a question of dumping all the bluetooth traffic and figuring things out by hand.

The Wii itself makes things a bit harder than the other platforms, I think. As far as standards go, I just bought RB2, and the GH:WT drums work flawlessly, so there’s definitely no secret magic going on.

Anyway, if you try this and it works, let me know!

By: Alphathon

Alphathon — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 21:34:32 +0000

@rschmidt: Really? I do hope not, it’s a great piece of software, and it would be really sad if it wasn’t in development anymore. Hope it’s not for the same reason as PPJoy (nobody emailed him saying “this software is great” so he gave up). What do you meen by it doesn’t register as one? Surely it must or it wouldn’t work (or am I missing something, like it being specifically programmed into GH:WT how to handle it rather than using the standards set by nintendo. I just hate it when developers do that.) I suppose the guitar would have to work like that as the GH3 one did and it would need to be the same for backward compatability (of both the game with the GH3 one and GH3 with the new guitar) but is usppose drums wouldn’t have the same restrictions (Harmonix didn’t even use wiimote add-ons for their periferals, so i suppose it could be worse)

By: T

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:07:29 +0000

Not really innovative or a serious mod. Not hatin’, just relatin’.

Practice pads w/ piezo has been done for quite a while (years).

By: Rschmidt

Rschmidt — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:31:59 +0000

@alphathon: That’s what I’m hoping too, but GlovePIE seems to be out of development. I did try a few times to get things working with various libraries, but apparently there’s some sort of addressing issue preventing people from getting it working. The drums don’t seem to register as a controller extension like the nunchuk or other extensions. I did get Glovepie working with Frets on Fire and a GH3 guitar, and it’s great for ‘map x to y’ stuff… but I’d really need to find a working interface of some sort for the drums, whether it’s an entire app or a library.

By: Alphathon

Alphathon — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 10:10:37 +0000

Well I’m sure it’ll come along eventually. It took rather a long time for support for the GH3 guitar to come out, and that is essentially a classic controller as far as glovepie is concerned (if told to use a classic controller buttons and a guitar controller is there, it’ll still work). I would imagine it would take a while longer for the drum kit, but it should come along eventually. Of cource it wouldn’t be impossible to do it from scratch, but that would require writing software to interface with the wii remote, which would probably take longer than setting the drums up in glovepie. Its a shame its not open source.

By: Rschmidt

Rschmidt — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:21:21 +0000

@alphathon: Nobody seems to have made a driver for the GH:WT drums on the Wii. I don’t know what’s keeping things from moving forward, but GlovePIE doesn’t see any input coming from the drums, only from the Wiimote itself. If you or anybody else comes up with a working solution, I’d love to hear about it.

By: Rschmidt

Rschmidt — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:15:25 +0000

@twistedsymphony: Article writer here. I actually did exactly what you’re describing for my neighbor’s Rock Band 1 pedal, and I’m going to put up a tutorial shortly with full details.

Basically, it’s a cheap magnetic switch like what you’d find in an alarm circuit. Bob (my partner-in-crime) and I simply took a piece of wood, strapped it to the front of the pedal, attached the wired portion of the sensor, and covered it in carpeting to dampen the sound. I turned the beater around to thump against the sensor, and embedded a magnet into the beater itself. Very easy and portable (but only compatible with Rock Band).

The practice pad simply gives you a nice muffled surface to attach a sensor to. It does a great job, but it’s not technically required.

To those of you who want me to end world hunger or hack the pentagon, who do you think I am? Bob Geldof? Kevin Mitnick?

Oh, and I never claimed I came up with this stuff; people have been making this stuff for GH:WT and Rock Band for awhile, and real musicians have been using stuff like this for years. The reason I put this up is that fixing up broken GH / RB controllers is much easier than most people think!

By: Harrison

Harrison — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:36:15 +0000

… This is confusing the hell out of me. Title says Rock Band, but that image is definitely Guitar Hero: World Tour.

By: Slagr

Slagr — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:16:12 +0000

this is actually pretty funny- scorehero.com has been churning out mods like this for months. this one is pretty well made though.

By: Happosai

Happosai — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:02:47 +0000

I was converting drum practice pads into piezo trigger pads for my Alesis D4 15 years ago…nice to see the technique still lives.

By: bwestplaysdrums

bwestplaysdrums — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 01:41:13 +0000

joe57005 – I wrote a max/msp patch called miditar hero to do exactly that. It works with any rock band or guitar hero guitar or drum set that can be connected via USB. it’s extremely easy to use, and only requires the max/msp runtime, the necessary controller drivers, and the miditar hero software.

http://miditarhero.wordpress.com

By: VonSkippy

VonSkippy — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:16:14 +0000

Can’t wait for chef hero to come out – then you can pretend that you know how to cook too.

//don’t get your barbie doll panties in a knot – your mom wouldn’t like it.