4 piezo to usb?

[spacedad]

i was wondering how easy/cheap this could be,to make a toy drum kit for a win10 laptop.
cheap and easy,that's me!

[skipscada]

This little thing ...

http://www.espruino.com/Pico

... has a host of analog inputs, can be easily programmed with javascript and has USB connector and tiny form factor.

I'm thinking something like attach the piezos directly and use the espruino itself to register the voltages you get and if they're consistent enough to use as they are. If not, make some sort of amp between piezos and inputs. Could be very versatile and fun. And it's live programmable, so you could fingerdrum with one hand and change parameters with the other.

[skipscada]

Found this too

http://www.instructables.com/id/MIDI-Arduino-Drums/

[skipscada]

Be sure to breadboard it first, because you'll surely come up with fun ideas along the way to expand or modify the project. And post the result!

[whyterabbyt]

I'd suggest a Teensy as another possibility. Does MIDI-over-USB almost 'straight out the box'

https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_midi.html

Basic tutorial for an arduino version up at sparkfun

https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/330

Kit of parts with some useful instructions at

http://www.spikenzielabs.com/SpikenzieL ... itKit.html

(Note; this PCB has diodes on it, to protect the arduino inputs, as per the circuit at http://todbot.com/blog/2006/10/29/spook ... l-arduino/ Might be worth replicating.)

[spacedad]

thanks,haven't seen those before,could be too hard for a blind messy hamfist like me.
i can just about solder a jack plug together.
oh,i'm in uk,don't know if that makes much dif.
i have a breadboard to make sandwhiches..?

[spacedad]

i mustn't be facetious,sorry.
i looked up breadboards,not sure what size and how many cables etc i would need....
outside the usa i would need a Genuino board? need to figure which one/cheapest option,
it's a lot to take in.
my main concern is that i wire it wrong and blow something in my kids laptop....
we could go the the soundcard route,beringhers are cheap but not with 4 I/O.
does anyone know a cheap 4 analog I/O most are 2 I/O and it's hard to tell from blurb if they are mono or stereo,needs to have win 10 drivers though.

there's a new rubber roll-up mat usb drum pad atm selling for under £10,which i may go for but it would be nice to learn how to go the diy route,then i could expand it later.

i've been a bit hard on myself lately since i broke my sons iphone trying to fix it,and i'm usually careful and quite good at thinks like that.
i'd hate to knacker the young ones laptop too.

[whyterabbyt]

i mustn't be facetious,sorry.
i looked up breadboards,not sure what size and how many cables etc i would need....
outside the usa i would need a Genuino board? need to figure which one/cheapest option,
it's a lot to take in.

The 'standard' is the Uno, I'd say. A clone board might be slightly cheaper but a 'name' Arduino or Genuino might be less faff.

my main concern is that i wire it wrong and blow something in my kids laptop....

Arduino boards get programmed and talk over USB, there's nothing to blow on that (the computer) side of it.

we could go the the soundcard route,beringhers are cheap but not with 4 I/O.
does anyone know a cheap 4 analog I/O most are 2 I/O and it's hard to tell from blurb if they are mono or stereo,needs to have win 10 drivers though.

Not offhand, but it would almost certainly more expensive than an Arduino board, IMO.

there's a new rubber roll-up mat usb drum pad atm selling for under £10,which i may go for but it would be nice to learn how to go the diy route,then i could expand it later.

There's a ton of web pages out there; drumpad controllers are a very common build. But it would be pretty hard to beat one prebuilt at £10, I'd say. However, Im not sure if that'll give you velocity, be interested to know which one it was.

[spacedad]

thanks.

this one:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-PC-Digita ... SwnipWZVgr
may not be vel sensitive though,

[spacedad]

i was thinking that the piezo to usb would be audio inputs,but that drumpad kit takes it to midi.
is that because piezo are not 'real' audio but triggers,or is it not possible to add audio/mic inputs to the Arduino?

[BertKoor]

i was thinking that the piezo to usb would be audio inputs,but that drumpad kit takes it to midi.
is that because piezo are not 'real' audio but triggers,or is it not possible to add audio/mic inputs to the Arduino?

Piezo's output basically audio, albeit very crude. Drum-heads only need to know whether there's a hit and how hard that hit was. So very crude audio will work for that use-case.

https://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/AnalogRead

The Arduino board contains a 6 channel (8 channels on the Mini and Nano, 16 on the Mega), 10-bit analog to digital converter.
[...]
It takes about 100 microseconds (0.0001 s) to read an analog input, so the maximum reading rate is about 10,000 times a second.

If you take these analog inputs for audio you'd get slightly better than telephone quality. But for drum triggers this is more than enough!

NB: I'm not sure how USB from Arduino into a laptop would work. Does it act as a USB host or a USB device? Big difference...

NB2: maybe you can find a second-hand Casio LD-80 (features MIDI Out) for next to nothing. Just replace the wires going from the pads with your piezo's and that could just work.

[whyterabbyt]

i was thinking that the piezo to usb would be audio inputs,but that drumpad kit takes it to midi.
is that because piezo are not 'real' audio but triggers,or is it not possible to add audio/mic inputs to the Arduino?

Piezo's output basically audio, albeit very crude.

I honestly wouldnt say there's anything crude about the audio output of a piezo as a mic. If Chris Watson is going to use them to record the sounds of insects walking, they're good enough.



The ADC resolution of the Arduino is pretty crude (8-bit) but that's obviously a different thing entirely.

Drum-heads only need to know whether there's a hit and how hard that hit was. So very crude audio will work for that use-case.

Its not really the audio you want there, though, its just the amplitude of the audio; basically you want an envelope follower of some type.

NB: I'm not sure how USB from Arduino into a laptop would work. Does it act as a USB host or a USB device? Big difference...

Most Arduino's talk to the PC via serial-over-USB. Some, like the Leonardo, will act as a USB device. The Teensy (which isnt an Arduino but can be programmed in the same language, from the Arduino IDE) can even act like a class-compliant MIDI device.

[spacedad]

thanks for the info guys,much appreciated.

8-bit audio would be ok for lo-fi,so could the piezo's be replaced with mics?
and what will the laptop see the usb input as,audio or midi?

[whyterabbyt]

thanks for the info guys,much appreciated.

8-bit audio would be ok for lo-fi,so could the piezo's be replaced with mics?

well, not really if you're still talking drumpads; mics pick up all sound that reach them travelling through the air, so any noise around the device could trigger it. piezos get used because they only pick up sound travelling through solid objects.

Plus, electret mic elements, the cheapest you'll find, still cost more than piezos.

but like i was saying, dont think of them as being for audio; think of as picking up the volume change over time, which can be used to determine MIDI velocity. 256 volume levels (8 bits) is more than MIDI gives you for velocity (7 bits).

and what will the laptop see the usb input as,audio or midi?

That depends entirely on what controller you use, and how you program it.

[spacedad]

what controller do you mean,software or hardware?
i was thinking plug in to usb on laptop and energyXT/asio4all would recognise it as aodio or midi.

i will stick to piezos for this project but it's nice to know you could try mics too,as there's plenty of peak trigger vsts or pitch trackers.
and if i put jack sockets on it,then i could easy swap piezo for mics.
(the 99p store has nice little mics)