The goal of this project is to connect real electronic Drums up to the wiimote to simulate the drum controllers of guitar hero World Tour(GHWT) and Rock Band(RB).

Background

When I started this project, the drum controllers were completely sold out here.  I decided to buy some real electronic drums with the confidence that I can adapt them to act as a controller and have the added bonus of learning real drums.  I bought a Legacy DD506 kit, settling on that because it has MIDI IN and MIDI out and also a USB port.  I am unsure how the USB will function because the manual states it will be detected on the PC as a USB audio device.  I was hoping it would help in any hacking, but that remains to be seen.
DD506
The kit was $1,000, and while a budget kit, it is all I can justify spending at this stage, so the nice Roland’s and Yamaha’s are out for now.  It has different sounding user and pre-programmed drum kits, practice songs where you can turn the drums on or off, a metronome include a counting voice, and quite a few other features.  The drums consist of a Snare and 3 Tom drums, a Kick drum and symbols Hi-Hat, Crash and ride.  more than enough for the GHWT or RB!

Due to the excellent work already done regarding the i2c communication between peripherals and the wiimote, I am confident I can build an adapter to play my drums to control GHWT and RB.

I have gathered as much info as I could and I am trying to process it all.

I have ordered an Arduino Duemilanove from http://www.littlebirdelectronics.com/ so I can start communicating with the wiimote using the i2c serial bus.  It is a great little device with loads of features and is very easy to use.

Arduino

I am sure I read somewhere it is possible to plug MIDI drums into the drum controller, but as I don’t have one, that isn’t an option… and I would rather get the most out of my new drums anyway!  That means the actual Wii drum controller is already realising my project!

I have started a topic at http://www.wiimoteproject.com/musical-wiimote-projects/real-drums-as-a-controller/ where I hope this will get discussed and many new ideas will emerge until a nice solution is found.

Friday, 23 Jan 2009:

While waiting for the Arduino I decided it was going to be pretty hard to work out what needed to be sent to the Wiimote from my electronic drums. If I had the real GHWT drums I could monitor what communication goes on, or at least have a look at the circuit board in them.

I picked up a set today… warranty violation time!!
GHWT Kit
drums

I’ll post some pics after Ive taken it apart. I have found a nice easy to build logic analyzer that is based on an Atmega Microcontroller, so I will build that as well and try to sniff the I2C traffic.

3 thoughts on “Adapting an electronic drum kit to the Wii”

  1. Hi,

    I am very interested in your project, I´m from brazil and in my next travel to japan I was planning to bring:

    1 – GHWT the complete set.
    2 – Eletronic Drums (Yamaha or rolland)

    If you are able to complete this I will be very thankful.

    By now I only have a Wii Japanese version.

    Please notify me of any evolution, or, If I can in any way help you.

    Thanks
    Alexandre

    Reply

  2. Hello, I left a comment a few days ago but I am not sure if it got posted. Basically I was also wondering if “real” electronic drums could be used with GHWT but I was thinking that I would buy a used GHWT drumset from ebay and hack the controller from it and simply plug in the “real” pads and cymbal sensors. I am hopeful since I notice in your pictures that the GHWT controller has two wires for each pad sensor. If the controller were hacked into its own little box with six 1/4″ jacks it seems like the pads from a “real” set could be plugged in directly. Maybe I’m wrong but your experiments are the closest I’ve seen to anyone trying. I am willing to buy a used set from ebay to sacrifice for the cause but getting a real digital drumset is farther in my future. I am thinking with my idea of a little hacked GHWT controller box you could plug in a real set or put plugs on the GHWT set and go back and forth between pads anytime you wanted. Have you gotten a chance to try connecting a pad to the GHWT contoller input? Please let me know if you have. Thanks and keep up the good work.

    Eddy

    Reply
  3. Pingback: Electronic Drum Kits Versus Acoustic Drums

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