Aerodrums 2 Kickstarter

[Sipaliwini]

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Yann from Aerodrums here. We've been working on our next model of air drums for over 5 years now.

The main changes:

- Aerodrums 2 doesn't require a computer to use (there is now a computer built-in to process the mocap and render the audio / output MIDI)

- it doesn't require you to control the lighting where you play like Aerodrums 1 does, so you can easily play on stage or in bright daylight

- it has many interactive features making use of drum notation



Aerodrums 2 can act as a plug & play MIDI controller. It allows for capturing the finesse and dynamics of drum set playing without needing to equip an acoustic set with triggers, or to use traditional electronic drums.

Aerodrums 2 can track the motions of sticks, hands and feet and convert them into MIDI events with imperceptible latency. This allows musicians to apply the instrument beyond drum set playing. Aerodrums can tell which limb was used to play a note. Something very few MIDI controllers can do.

Check out the project on Kickstarter and back it if you like it:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ae ... -the-stage (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aerodrums/aerodrums-2-a-new-way-to-drum-from-home-to-the-stage)

We plan to ship Aerodrums 2 to backers this fall (the project is funded).

Feel free to ask me anything. I'm knowledgeable, I co-programmed Aerodrums 1 and am co-developing Aerodrums 2.

[RunBeerRun]

Looks pretty cool, too expensive for me though and too many pieces.

I use a wiimote and sustain pedal for a silent drumkit.

[Sipaliwini]

Thanks. Yes I wish we could make it cheaper. Passive optical mocap still isn't cheap. For Aerodrums 1 we were piggy backing on Sony's Playstation 3 camera (that was the cause of the issues with bright lighting).

Cool about using Wiimote to capture drumming. It's a fairly small controller, but still very different from a drumstick. I get you don't need the ergonomics of a drumstick for all music.

[RunBeerRun]

I watched the videos and it seems very useful, although those guys made it seem like they were playing a huge fat drumkit instead of a small one and they were hitting the drums really hard if it were real.

I tried making a webcam to midi plugin but it was too hard!

[Sipaliwini]

Ah cool, that's exactly how we started: the Playstation 3 Eye is really just a webcam that can operate at a high enough framerate for motion capture (125 fps in Aerodrums 1).

The hard bit is to make it easy and fast for the computer to locate the objects you want to track. That's why we use retro-reflective tape and an illuminator, like they use in mocap studios for video games and film. If you don't do that the images change so much with lighting conditions that it takes very expensive computations to make sense of the things being tracked.

[RunBeerRun]

I remember another product called Drums Anywhere which was just software and I think just required a microphone and you tapped on the table. It might have had some latency, which is worthless when you trying to control the beat.