Rock Band Rigid Drum Head Concept

Since I have been posting, a lot of people have been asking what we have been working on. Well Here are some pictures. I am sure we will go through multiple revisions of this drum head before we are done, so consider this a very rough draft. For all you hackers out there, this is a beta release. We made this concept out of some extra materials we had lying around our lab (mostly acrylic) just to make sure our mounting points and measurements were within tolerances.

We reused the drum rubber mounts from the EL kit for now. We would like to make something that requires not using any of the original drum head parts, but we are finding it difficult to do that while still making the price reasonable. If we were to fine tune what we had right now and sell it, everyone would be looking at around $125-$150 a set including sensors. Obviously, we would like to drop that drastically.

What you are looking at is basically what our test drum heads are going to look like (with some minor changes here and there. We wont be using the crappy rubber top we have now, dont worry). We are going to be using different materials, plastics as well as composites, and different thicknesses of those materials. We will also be experimenting with different sensors as well as both neoprene and gum rubber tops.

One thing that we will be testing other than sensitivity is durability. I will most likely be sending these out to the community, to expert and novice drummers, and encouraging them to see if they can break them while playing. Thats not for awhile, so be patient. Some key changes that you may notice in this initial concept are:

- Enclosed drum sensor housing
- Thicker drum head
- Sturdier rubber mount housing
- Improved overall durability

What we will be improving on further:

- Rubber mounts that do not involve reusing original compenents.
- Flatter top (obviously. Thats an easy fix though)
- Much Lower Cost
- Better drumming responses: eg, higher sensitivity, better rolls
- Gum Rubber/Neoprene tops to improve both noise and performance

Now Shipping Internationally

Thanks to popular demand in foreign countries, we are now shipping internationally. $10 to UK, $7.50 to Canada, and $25 to elsewhere at the moment.

Thanks to all our overseas buyers for inquiring!

-lando

Some Comments About Our Drum Sensors

A lot of people have been emailing us and asking if our drum sensors will improve their kits. Unfortuneately, they wont, and neither will any other products out there. There are many third party vendors that sell upgrades to the drum kit and boast improved performances: gum rubber pads, neoprene pads, etc (we even found another drum sensor seller). We can assure you that none of these products will improve performance from the stock kit. Although the pads will quiet your drums nicely, you will loose some sensitivity. (we use gum rubber and just hit harder!)

So why should you buy from us as opposed to others? We have many years of experience in the electronics industry, and we are dedicated to selling quality materials. We are not Joe Gamer's manufacturing junk in our mom's basement to make a quick buck. Our goal is to make improvements to the kits, not replacements. So stick with us, and watch out for new products

www.RockingRepair.com is Up and Running!

Amist final exams and work, the web site is functional and you can now place orders. The webmaster did a good job, but we will be refining things like art, links, and code as we mature the site, so bare with us. If you have any suggestions or find a dead link, please feel free to email us. Now on to the good stuff!

We have single, dual, and quad (best value) packs to purchase, and we will be mailing them with an instruction pamphlet. Like we said in our previous post, you can get them in either a quick connect or a Skotchlok version. Skotchlok connections are for Rock Band gamers whose sensor plugs are glued into the housing. You can always pick the glue out and go with the quick connects, or leave it glued and go with the Skotchloks. *** We also are selling replacement tape for $5. *** Its a a finer thread than the original and it does a job.

So all I can say is buy our stuff! We do quality work, and if you are unsatisfied, we will either get you a new product or refund your bling. Spread the word, and look our for new products.

Drum Tester Up and Running

We have implemented in hardware a way to test for missed hits! We soldered some special components to the drum kit circuit board that will allow us to measure when the drum kit sees a hit and when it misses. We then hooked those components up to a dsPIC chip and are able to monitor just about everything going on in the system to within about 1800 nanoseconds. We are going to spend a day or two calibrating the system, and then we can capture data all day long.

In the Meantime ........

....while our site is getting up to speed, ( Seems like thats how I start off every post. Feel free to yell at our webmaster, I do it all the time! ), we have an idea for a "missed hit" solution. It is most likely going to be a combination of things, but we think we have a strong idea of why people are getting missed hits. More importantly, I think we can fix it. We have captured a bunch of sample data from our scope (about 10,000 points per drum strike) and ran it through some monte carlo simulations in matlab. We were able to recreate a missed hit in matlab, and we have a solution (on a bar napkin at this point). Our next step will be to recreate a missed hit in the hardware, and go from there. To wet your whistle, here are some pretty pictures from our scope of single and double hits (not missed hits).

View Album

Get your own

Drum Sensor Pictures

While we get our site and advertising up and running, check out the drum sensor pictures. We even upgraded the stock tape ! We will also offer replacement tape for gamers whos tape has wore out.

View Album

Get your own

Web Site Is Up

check it out! Its a start

http://www.rockingrepair.com/

Bare with us while we make changes. We also made a cool logo, but we dont know where to put it quite yet. ha ha !

Fixed Sensors!

After about a month of searching, testing, real jobs, and exams, we found some great sensors to replace our stock ones. From where you say? We made them! Being nerds, we thought we could make sensors comparable or better than stock. We tried, and we did! We are going to be selling them soon, in either a quick connect or crimp version.

On Hold

Our quest for sensors is on hold for the moment while we deal with school. We are all pretty busy with our jobs and night classes (finite element analysis for me, fun), so we will get things together and on the site once we get our other work done. Stay Tuned.

But dont worry, our kits are working! (for now....)

Broken Sensors

We have seen some internet traffic that people are having the same sensor issues we are having. Sooooo, we have decided our first task will be to find replacement sensors. Keep your eye out.

First Post!

We decided to set up a blog while we get the website up and running so that we can keep track of our development process. Welcome!

If you dont know who we are, we are basically 3 gaming nerds with a bunch of fancy degrees who are fed up with our crappy Rock Band drum kit. So we are here to try and figure out how to make them better. A lot of parts on our kits have broken all ready and we are researching new / better replacement products. If we come up with anything good, we will post it here. Stay Tuned.