Drum board

Project Overview

This project aims to produce an electronic drum set that is silent yet feels nearly identical to a real acoustic drum set. I've split the project into two phases:

• Phase 1 - creating a basic kit with a kick drum trigger and 2 drum pads as a proof-of-concept (completed)
• Phase 2 - creating a full drum kit with kick trigger, 4 drum pads, and 4 electronic cymbals (in progress)

Full Outline

Drum Module

• I'm currently using an ESP32 with edrumulus and a custom-built analog frontend
  • The ESP32 has a drawback of not being a native MIDI device - it requires a script to appear as a virtual MIDI device
  • I'll be replacing it with a teensy 4.2, which solves this issue. Additionally, it has an SD card slot and plenty of processing power, so hopefully I'll be able to use it as a standalone synthesizer.
• I'm currently designing a PCB which includes the teensy, 8 input jacks, analog frontends for each channel, and display/keypad for controlling settings

Materials:

• Teensy 4.2
• 8x 1/4 inch PCB mount TRS audio jacks
• 16x2 character LCD
• Arduino numeric keypad
• 8x TRS audio cable

Features:

• Teensy 4.2 based - with headers for all GPIOs
• headers for piezo inputs (test points)
• i2c headers for display (VCC, GND, SDA, SCL)
• 8 gpios for numeric keypad

Drum Pads

Materials:

• Drum Shells
• Drum top/bottom
• M6x50mm bolts / M6 wing nuts (2x8 + 2x10 = 36 total)
• Regular M6 nuts for attaching drum mount
• M3x10mm bolts/nuts (already own)
• 2x10in drum head, 2x12in drum head
• piezos/trigger cones/audio jacks

Notes:

• All drum shells will be printed with shell.scad (my script for generating drum shells)
• Drum design is from Open E-Drums

Hi-Hat

• Will likely use this optical hi-hat controller

Mounting Hardware

Rack will likely be a second-hand alesis e-drum rack

TODO:

• modify pcb to allow for optical hi hat sensor

Tom mounts:

• Alesis drum clamp mount - these each require an Alesis L-rod
• Modify this Roland mount to change the hole from 11mm (Roland) to 9mm (Alesis)

Snare mount:

• ???

Cymbal Mounts:

• These could use the same alesis drum clamp mounts, but they require a cymbal mount instead of an L-rod (much more expensive)

Hi-Hat Mount:

• Real hi-hat stand. It's really not worth bothering with anything else.

Members

Ethan James, Computer Engineering Student (2024) - ethanjamesauto@vt.edu

Images

Drum module PCB: This is the prototype (Phase 1):

Drum pad notes

• height from base plate is 47.5mm
• Trigger cones are 35mm tall
• Recommended height of trigger cone above shell is maybe 1.5mm or 1/16in
• definitely use spacers (3d printed or some other plastic) to adjust height of plate