Nigel Goodwin said:
drummers are well known for being a different species to the rest of the human race
lol, how true..., and delicately put :lol:
xenoxion said:
[reed switches] use two very thin, flexible pieces of metal near each other. I'm pretty sure that hitting a drum or a cymbal, no matter the angle, could trigger one of those.
that is a very good idea. assuming that it works, that is the simplest solution. And brings the component count down to about 4 (reed switch, LED, resistor, battery)
Which brings me onto my next point: can you buy THIN batteries, like AAAs (sometimes called LR03 or MN2400), but thiner, preferably? Remembering that the drum sticks needs to be about the same weight as normal (i.e. inserted components can't weigh much more than the wood that they replace...). I vaguely remember seeing some varta button batteries that were about 6mm accross...
Nigel Goodwin said:
drumsticks break fairly frequently anyway, I wouldn't expect a hollowed out one to last any time at all
that was a concern, but
originally I was doing the project as an experiment in electronics, I thought I could put up with breakage: if the sticks lasted no time at all, I would have wasted some time, but i'd have learn't something
. I'm now getting a bit more involved in it, and as such my main concern
is simply the robustness. I intend to make the hole down the stick as narrow as possible, by using 2mm LEDs (or smaller) but these LEDs may not be robust enough, but its possibly better than haveing a big hole. But then if I have a small hole, it will be harder to get epoxy resin (or something) down the hole (if I left the hole with nothing to strengthen it the sticks would break in no time, as everyone pointed out). :? :?
hmm, i was going to feed the LED down the hole that the wire was going down, but I suppose I could feed the wires through a narrow hole in the middle of the stick, solder them to the LED, the pull the LED back into the tip... What do you think?
Thanks for all the ideas with piezo, impact sensors etc, but i'm pretty confidant the reed switch idea will work reasonably well, and it is the simplest, by far.
Thanks again for all the ideas, i'm amazed how much appeared overnight!!
Tim
P.S. maybe metal tips on the sticks, connected to a high voltage source, ground the cymbals, when you hit them, sparks fly!! Maybe thats going a bit too far, lol.