DJ Zenko Drum Bot

Introduction

The story of this project is my "maker" story.

I was looking for a new hobby and learning C++ basics, Java for Android without any original project was quite frustrating. I discovered that a member of my family was in a hackerspace and he explained to me what it was and all the range of possibilities.

By listening to him, I understood that it was what I was looking for: a place with good guys where to make something with what I know or what I want to learn and know.

Idea

The idea of the project came by itself. I had this small drum with very interesting sound and the idea to have controlled sticks on it allowed me to explore a lot of techniques behind IoT (a concept that I didn't know at that time).

So I ordered an Arduino Uno with a kit of sensors, trained on those sensors and Arduino IDE. Then I ordered the solenoids, transistors and diodes. This part is very easy.

Quickly, I had the idea to command the stick by WiFi so I discovered and ordered the ESP8266 and trained on HTML (managing the answer time of the server was more difficult).

For the mechanical part, I had to use a 3D DAO and learn how to use the laser cutting from the hackerspace but my first prototype was made with LEGO.

Result

2 Months later, I have a functional prototype with WiFi command of 250ms reactivity. This is quite good but I have now to think on how get a quicker answer and how control the 9 solenoids (9 notes) in parallel without waiting 250ms between each hit.

The goal

Tldr: the goal of this project was learning

• Sensors and actuator controlling with an Arduino (or other microcontroler)

• Arduino IDE C++ development

• ESP8266 web server for IoT control

• Sketchup and Fusion 360 drawings, laser cutting and 3D printing.

• Create a complete new object and fully original from scratch

For the next step, I must complete the 9 sticks (the upper one still have to be designed) and see how to have the best signal control.

Video