Light up bass drum

[monkeychik]

Hey guys i'm starting a project for a friend's birthday which involves creating an LED rig around the rim of a bass drum which lights up upon the bass drum being striked, I seek you guys' expertise on this matter, what do you think is the best thing to activate the system, i was hoping for a miniature pressure pad ( very small ) to mount on the skin of the drum at the player side which detects the collision. ( it needs to be small so it does not ruin the acoustics) Any ideas?

 

[pretzelz]

Hi, your post shares a slight similarity with one I've just posted about a motion activated LED light. I'm a newbie so can't offer you any real advice, but what about this as an idea? Install a motion detecting switch (tiny) on your drum somewhere (where it will feel the vibrations sufficiently) and that'll switch on your LED circuit when required. You wouldn't need a minature pressure pad on the drum skin in that case. Nice idea though I like the idea of drums lighting up on contact. Would be good to have maybe a second delay after being activated though for each drum.

 

[monkeychik]

hmm, i could put it on the bass drum pedal...

 

[pretzelz]

Or you could turn the pedal into a switch possibly, by having two contacts connect when the pedal is pressed at a certain point

 

[crutschow]

You could use a microswitch such as this in contact with the pedal at the end of the stroke.

But for best reliability you might want to consider a small mic with an amp to control a MOSFET switch. If you mount the mic on the drum and adjust the gain so it only triggers on the loud sound of the drum, you probably won't need to get fancy with any added filter circuits. It could just be a small electret mic, a mic amp, a rectifier, and a MOSFET.