Mock Band

Microcontroller Firmware to emulate guitar and drum kit controllers from the Wii version of the Rock Band games.

This is based on the foundational work done by Nicholas Angle on the Wii Guitar Controller (text article). All I did was speed up the loop code to detect drum pad strikes, which are very quick!

Parts Needed

• A Sparkfun Pro Micro
• A physical controller

Sample controllers

I used the following:

• MiniCaster by Vlad the Inhaler: it comes with full build instructions.

• Cheap children's drum toy, each pad is a momentary switch.

Wiring

Drum Kit

On the drum kit,

• Orange: kick pedal
• Solo Buttons: cymbals

I think. I haven't been able to test this yet, but the Clone Hero wiki leads me to believe this is how it works.

Still To Do

• 2x kick: needs its own input pin. Maps to button 5.
• Drum pad modifier: looks like button 10 needs to be pressed when a drum pad is hit.
• Drum cymbal modifier: I don't see a problem with using the solo pins for this, but I may need to also send button 11.
• Hi Hat pedal: needs to be its own input pin. Looks like it maps to the second Y axis: the one I'm currently using to send frame rate.

If I set this up correctly, it will use every input pin on the pro micro.

Perhaps a smarter thing to do would be use the value of USB_PID to re-use the orange solo pin as the hi hat pedal, and the red solo pin as the 2x kick.

The Clone Hero Drum Mapping Guide is super helpful. I'll need to hunt down a copy of Wii Rock Band 3 (or maybe The Beatles?) in order to test this on an actual Wii.