Hi Guys,

So I've been working on hardware and software last week... But first of all, here's a little demo that shows you how eXaDrums performs with two drums:

So far it's pretty good, but it can still be improved a lot. The video shows how the system works with a 4-input ADC (the MCP3204), however, a "normal" drum kit will most likely need more than 4 sensors. That's why I also tested the MCP3208, which has 8 inputs, and it worked perfectly. I also decreased the clock frequency of the ADC to simulate 8 sensors, and there's no doubt, it's going to work.

I received all the components last week, and started to solder a board that will plug directly in the Pi's GPIO. It's going to be pretty neat! The board will be compatible with the MCP3004, 3008, 3204, and 3208, switching from one to another will be very simple, as they will all fit on the same DIP socket. More info when the board is all finished.

Now about the software. A minor update was needed to make it work with the MCP3208. In the future the sensor stuff will be improved to work with more sensors anyway. Apart from that, the code has been reorganized a little bit.

The most interesting part is what I'm working on at the moment. In the previous log I was talking about having more than one sound per instrument, but that's not everything. Having more than one sound per instrument is just the beginning of something bigger. If you think about it, the drum kit can handle these sounds in order to deal with more than one sensor per drum, or per instrument (yes, I'm talking about the hi-hat). So yeah, I came up with an idea on Sunday night, started to write it down, and wrote the beginning of the code. It's going to take some time though, but I definitely know how to make this work.

In case you didn't read the logs of the RaspiDrums project, I already have the sensor for the hi-hat. I've been thinking about that stuff for a long time now, but I was never very happy with my previous ideas. This time it's becoming real, so stay tuned!

Cheers.