This tutorial from Adafruit shows how to create a custom interactive drum set that lights up with sound. It uses a mic amp sensor that is connected to a miniature Arduino Gemma board to detect when the instrument is being hit by the sticks. Neopixels then illuminate into a range of colors creating a beautifully synced up music presentation.
The container that houses the electronics is 3D printed. The entire circuit is integrated into the snare, mid-tom, hi-tom and a drum kick. All the code and step-by-step instructions can be found on Adafruit’s website. Now imagine something like this being packed up in a suitcase and carried from venue to venue as an up-and-coming band travels from state to state on tour; especially at Drum n’ Bass raves or electronic based music festivals. A video of the kit being used is below.
Hmm… Piezo activated maybe?
Nah, they specifically state in the tutorial that they opted not to use Piezo and went with their own micro-controllers for the project instead
Piezo sensors would be a better choice because their direct contact and lower sensitivity would ease the isolation from external noise. Perhaps there are not ready to made modules like the electret mic one, but Interfacing is easy.
A guy at my hackerspace has done just this with a doombec drum, where each hit will send a pulse of light circling around the translucent drum skin. It worked perfectly and would only pick up external noise if you yelled within a few inches of the skin. Sadly TSA lost his whole burning man bag (they were probably concerned about the bag full of 5000mAh lipos and electronic projects).
Each controller has an electret mic.
I could use this in my drum kit. It’s made of clear plastic water jugs and tappers.
Agree piezo is probably better. Video lacks proper demo. Kinda surprising usually adafruit rocks the videos. Would be nice to have atleast a 10 second solo (using sticks instead of fingernails) to see if it actually works with mic’s . Even with the fingernail demo you can kinda see the bass activating all the pads.
One question on this; Why NeoPixels? They seem to be illuminating them all in unison, so using relatively expensive individually-adressable LEDs seems a waste.
I’m curious how much this affects acoustics I certainly wouldn’t do this to a set that sees the inside of a recording studio.