My friends band asked me to make them an LED version of their logo. This is no problem, simple wiring and then a battery.
But, since they are putting it on their bass drum, I thought it would be cool to detect every time the drum is hit and using that, initiate some quick brightness fade. When they hit the drum, it goes to max brightness and fades to its standard "low" level in about half a second where it will stay until it is hit again.
So, my question is what can I use to detect that drum hit? Since it is on a stage to begin with, there will be lots of vibration going on at all times so whatever does the detecting has to be durable enough to handle this without giving the "it was hit" signal.
So, my question is what can I use to detect that drum hit?
How hard is the drum hit? With what? Have you bothered to search? Seems to me that there have been a lot of threads on this topic - none all that satisfactory, since the definition of hitting a drum and hitting a switch are two completely different concepts.
You may want to consider FFT analysis. It would be fairly straight forward to light LEDs based upon the values of the "buckets". This code will compile on an UNO and all that is needed is a small microphone/preamp to drive the inputs.
I did do some basic searches but came up empty. The drum is a bass drum, it is hit with a foot pedal - the standard bass drum like this http://www.acquris.se/images/small/184.png
I was thinking of using some sort of pressure sensitive resistor taped behind the drum where the foot pedal would strike. Then I could measure that resistance and if it hits a certain level, it would be called a "hit" and go through the fade code.
The other idea I had was to use a Piezo to detect the sound but I am worried that it would be difficult to have tweaked enough threshold to filter out all the other sounds from the other drums, guitars, and general vibrations while on a live-concert stage.
Since I have never used either of these, what would your advice be if I would like to have this done within a few days (concert is coming up) and getting parts can be a bit of a pain where I live?
A phototransistor seams a little too much for something so simple. I was thinking of trying to pick up a Piezo today but I have a question about those.
At my local shop, they have a "Piezo signal generator" - is there a difference between a piezo that emits a noise compared to one that reacts to it? From what I could see they are all the same but if you output to them, they make noise and if you input from them then you can detect noise - would this be correct?
When flexed a piezo generates a small voltage and when given a small voltage a piezo flexes. If you give a piezo a 2KHz signal, it will flex at 2KHz and make a quite effective speaker. I once used the piezo off the back of an old wristwatch (beeper) to sense a flexing spring, but it did involve hours of grinding the steel case off of the back of the piezo, so I would probably order one if I had to do it again.
The difference may be in how the piezo is mounted. Sensors are typically mounted to some sort of lever to pick up vibration while speaker generators tend to be mounted to something that will resonate and amplify the sound. You can use them in reverse just fine, but they may be a bit harder to work with.
It will pick up a lot of noise, but you can mitigate this by setting a high trigger threshold in the code and only looking for low frequency signals. You can do this with an FFT, but it might be more efficient to do it with a digital low pass filter.
Hi, I am a drummer my self and have used something similar to what you want to do ( but not with the Arduino ). Why don't you just use a simple sound sensor. Then, you could adjust the sensitivity of the sound and with some testing you would be able to get it to go off only when the drum is hit. The bass drum is going to be much louder than everything else (if you put the system inside or at leas the sensor inside the drum) so you should have to worry about it going off on snare or cymbal hits; assuming you adjusted the sensitivity once you completed the system.
I was kinda thinking of contact microphone hooked up with arduino and max/msp could do the work It is possible to place that little mic right behind the skin on the drum where the drummer would kick it. Analyse the incoming sound level and define a threshold to trigger the LED's on whatever output pin. I think a contact mic would eliminate the LEDs from being trigger from other sound sources, i.e. in a live situation (would be lame to not show the cool thing to an audience anyways :D).
Actually, you might be able to get away with something like this:
Just a microswitch with a long metal arm on it, placed under the pedal. No calibration required, no false positives, no interfering with the sound of the instrument.
Just a microswitch with a long metal arm on it, placed under the pedal. No calibration required, no false positives, no interfering with the sound of the instrument.
True. Mechanical & direct is probably the best approach. Simple usually = more reliable.
And, if needed (to synchronize with sound better) could just add a delay [with or without "delay()" ] so lights trigger as bass drum is heard/felt by audience.
It is possible to place that little mic right behind the skin on the drum where the drummer would kick it. Analyse the incoming sound level and define a threshold to trigger the LED's on whatever output pin. I think a contact mic would eliminate the LEDs from being trigger from other sound sources, i.e. in a live situation (would be lame to not show the cool thing to an audience anyways :D).
