Handakes
May 21, 2015, 06:12 AM
Hey there,
First and for most, I do these kind of circuits for pure fun, and I have no formal education in electrical engineering what so ever (I am actually a senior medical student) so please, bare with me, and try to keep it simple..
Recently, I have built a guitar controller from parts that were laying around in my house, and an xbox 360 controller.. and it works great, so I was thinking I could also build a custom Drum controller as well..
The main problem is that I need a sensor that senses vibrations and acts as a pushbutton that I can hook to my controller board.. hit the drums, close the switch momentarily.. here's what I've learned so far:
- a piezoelectric disk (such as the one in a buzzer) can be used a sensor for vibration as it generates high potential low current when deformed.
-you need a microcontroller (like most of the readily available drum kits and midi devices) to let the board know which is on and which is off.
-you need a pull down resistor to negate the "floating" state.
I can't use a microcontroller (strictly out of financial reasons) so I was wondering if there is a way to make this work without it, here's what I've tried :
-soldered 2 wires to the "signal" and "gnd" leads of one of the buttons on the xbox 360 controller pad
- extracted the disk from the buzzer, and connected the disk to the wires from the pad (directly) like so:
On board Signal lead ---------> Piezoelectric Ground lead
On board Ground lead --------> piezoelectric Voltage lead
-tried the board to see if a tap is registered as a button press, and found that every 10-15 taps registers as only 1 button press!
I think I need a capacitor to make sure that every single tap registers as button press, but I am currently a bit lost, and need to know if the idea is even sound and applicable (without the use of microcontrollers that is)..
Thanks, and sorry for the extra long question..
First and for most, I do these kind of circuits for pure fun, and I have no formal education in electrical engineering what so ever (I am actually a senior medical student) so please, bare with me, and try to keep it simple..
Recently, I have built a guitar controller from parts that were laying around in my house, and an xbox 360 controller.. and it works great, so I was thinking I could also build a custom Drum controller as well..
The main problem is that I need a sensor that senses vibrations and acts as a pushbutton that I can hook to my controller board.. hit the drums, close the switch momentarily.. here's what I've learned so far:
- a piezoelectric disk (such as the one in a buzzer) can be used a sensor for vibration as it generates high potential low current when deformed.
-you need a microcontroller (like most of the readily available drum kits and midi devices) to let the board know which is on and which is off.
-you need a pull down resistor to negate the "floating" state.
I can't use a microcontroller (strictly out of financial reasons) so I was wondering if there is a way to make this work without it, here's what I've tried :
-soldered 2 wires to the "signal" and "gnd" leads of one of the buttons on the xbox 360 controller pad
- extracted the disk from the buzzer, and connected the disk to the wires from the pad (directly) like so:
On board Signal lead ---------> Piezoelectric Ground lead
On board Ground lead --------> piezoelectric Voltage lead
-tried the board to see if a tap is registered as a button press, and found that every 10-15 taps registers as only 1 button press!
I think I need a capacitor to make sure that every single tap registers as button press, but I am currently a bit lost, and need to know if the idea is even sound and applicable (without the use of microcontrollers that is)..
Thanks, and sorry for the extra long question..