2024-01-15 08:41:36 -07:00
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---
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title: The State of Homebuilt Rock Band Drums
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date: 2024-01-15
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tags:
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- rockband
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---
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There are currently at least four efforts to get a working Rock Band drum kit:
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2024-01-15 08:48:11 -07:00
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## Mad Catz Rock Band 3 MIDI PRO-Adapter (mature)
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2024-01-15 08:41:36 -07:00
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Based on the vendor ID sent by the USB devices,
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I think Mad Catz is the company that made most of the
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officially licensed Rock Band instruments.
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They're still selling something that takes MIDI input,
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and outputs signals to look like a Rock Band 2 drum kit.
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The converter plus a decent entry-level kit will cost about $500,
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and probably provides a very nice feel.
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You can also use the drums by themselves or as a MIDI controller.
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## Mockband Drums (stable)
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Using a $33 drum toy from Amazon ($25 on sale),
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you can build a tabletop drum kit.
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I've been playing on it for the last month
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and the experience is comparable to the Rock Band 1 kit I had 10 years ago.
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It's okay, but not fantastic.
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This requires some soldering,
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but all the development is done.
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If you're crafty,
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you can probably have this working in an afternoon.
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https://git.woozle.org/neale/mockband
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## Polybar Drum Kit (in development)
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Some of the polybar people are working on a from-scratch 3d printed drum kit.
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So far it seems they're trying to use piezos to read drum hits,
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which could mean it will send some kind of velocity information.
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Although probably not super accurate,
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and I haven't yet seen a game that uses it,
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this would be closer to the official Rock Band drum kit.
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When it's closer to finished,
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it will probably use the santroller firmware
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(see below).
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2024-01-15 08:47:09 -07:00
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I'm trying to help these developers
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with what I've learned from Mockband.
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When it's finished,
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you can expect a nice detailed instruction manual
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and lots of community support,
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just like the polybar.
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There may even be kits you can buy from etsy.
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2024-01-15 08:41:36 -07:00
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As far as I know,
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2024-01-15 08:47:09 -07:00
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all development on this project is happening on Discord,
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2024-01-15 08:41:36 -07:00
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so there's no URL to add here.
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## Santroller (stable?)
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Sanjay9000,
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the person who was made a very nice packaged version of a Rock Band guitar controller firmware,
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has released a new firmware that claims to support drums as well.
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This is made to replace the firmware in an official Rock Band drum kit,
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but will probably be what the Polybar effort uses,
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because so much effort has been put into making the firmware easy to set up.
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https://santroller.tangentmc.net/
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