The ultimate air duo of keyboards and guitar has now taken a step closer to becoming a full band with the creation of the Air Drums by Israeli electronics tinkerer Maayan Migdal. His system is comprised of a couple of modified hand rakes, a pair of sandals, the ever-useful Arduino Uno and some custom circuitry which feeds through to a laptop via a standard MIDI interface.
The air drum sticks of Migdal's MIDI Air Drums started life as a pair of garden rakes. Each one has had the claw end lopped off and then attacked with a drill to make room for a USB port at the base and either one or two accelerometers at the other end. The left-hand stick represents a hi-hat and the right takes care of both snare and crash cymbal. He then took the drill to a pair of beach sandals for more USB and sensor connectivity - one sporting a light sensor to raise and lower the hi-hat and the other containing an accelerometer for the bass drum.
The virtual drum kit is then connected to a four-port USB hub wired up to an Arduino Uno microcontroller board, which in turn is fed to a MIDI interface for onward processing on a laptop. As you can see from the video demonstration below, in which the inventor also outlines the build process, the result is a fully functional air drum kit.
Of course, it's not going to challenge the versatility offered by Korg's Wavedrum Mini, but I know a bunch of dedicated air drummers who would love to get their hands on one.
Source: Hack A Day.