/diy/ - Do It Yourself

Don't know how stuff on the 'skin' affects the sound, but accelerometers could work, can be attached to the bottom skin and will measure big acceleration on impact, connect to microcontroller/circuit and tape light inside the drum as well. You should wire it all to some central control and power point I guess... I'd estimate ~$80 if you drum in the dark (low need for light), more if you want it to be visible in daylight

>>551404

It'll fuck the sound, maybe an air pressure measure or something like that beneath the center of the head, some LEDs, and ARDUINO ARDUINO ARDUINO ARDUINO ARDUINO ARDUINO all over the place.

I am envisioning the use of a very durable momentary switch with a large contact pad placed just under the head (2 or so mm) run directly to LED with a battery pack.

No need for anything complex. This is something a simple mechanical solution can solve.

Had this idea years ago.
Here's what I came up with - Works, but I'm sure there's better ways.
Today I'd do sensors of some kind into a computer controlling switches back to the lights - Would be much more manageable, customizable, and less finicky.

>>551400
Piezo pickups. Also called contact mics.

You can attach them to the head of the drum, or the shell. I've had no problem taping them to the heads and not affecting the sound (why you're concerned about the tone of an acrylic set is beyond me). If you know what you're doing, you can make them pressure sensitive so harder hits make the lights brighter.

>>551420
I was thinking something like this. Drumheads move a whole lot when hit, so you could problably just tape a skinny wire with an exposed end to the middle in such a way that it contacts another exposed wire when the drum is hit.

Well, it's acrylic so the tone is probs garbage already (full disclosure :I'm a drummer and I fucking hate vistalight) but you could always set something up to complete a circuit when the drumhead deforms.

Piezos taped to the drum heads, measure a certain amount of force?

Too many variables, though, and you'd need to use a microcontroller to weed them out. At that point they're just electric drum pads.

>>551531
>>551491
>>551420

If you've seen a drum head in extreme slo-mo, it's just like a drop in the water. So yes, a momentary contact switch to a very high-powered LED should flash bright enough during a momentary contact to light up nicely enough. Though now that I think about it, the wire contact itself might do better than the momentary switch on a pad, just because of the bare metal contact and the better likelihood of multiple rapid strikes producing the proper flashes.

Or, take some cig pack guitar amps. Get a TRS mic, hook it up, desolder the speaker and hook up an LED in its place. Like that one guy on here that posted his guitar amp with LED run in series with the speaker, and it lit up and even pulsed with the harmonics.

>>551465
This is pretty much the best solution ITT. They are durable, transportable, can be velocity sensitive, and easy to replace should one fail. Much more so than needing to remove a skin to get access to the switch/flimsy piece of wire at least.

They are so effective they are already in common use. Pic related, Drum triggers. Used to open and close compressor gates when recording, and, to trigger lights via DMX controllers. Rig each to an op-amp, and have the output of said op-amp trigger a driving transistor to run your lights.

>>551460 + >>551465 = >>551400

lololol fucking ludwig Vistalite!!!

that said.... i googled "drums light up when hit" and this was the first result.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Light-Up-Drum-Kit/?ALLSTEPS

learn to google man

>>551721
as a side note OP, you may want to think about the fact that 90% of the time you will be lighting up the bass and snare. also that your cymbals will have no effect on the lights. point being it might not look as exciting as it sounds.

so you may want to consider a simpler system (or maybe install this as a secondary system) where the whole kit lights up in response to the music in general, or have all your toms light up any time any one of them is hit, etc.

>>551728
Why not lights pointed at the cymbals? Would look cool with cymbals that have holes in them.