Moriah's Web: May 2008

Recently I have become quite interested in electronics. Beside my Rock Band hack I have been trying to figure out how to etch my own PCBs. I am sorry to say it has not been going very well. The process of transferring the design to the pcb has not been working. I tried regular photo paper like so may people recommend and then tried Pulsar transfer paper. The toner just floats away when I soak the paper off. I managed to get enough of the design to stick as a template and then I used the old fashion tape method. I had some traces that were not complete and solder wires across them. There is still some issue somewhere I have to track down as only a few LEDs are lighting. This project has just not been going well for some reason.

The Mooninite plans came from here.

After completing my pedal mod I kept reading about what other improvements could be made. I ended up deciding that a full blown electronic drum kit was required. After much deliberation I talked myself into dropping $700 on a Yamaha DTXplorer. Thanks to Flash for distilling 100+ pages of a forum thread into this site I was able to complete the mod.

Instead of soldering to the almost invisible points on the back of the RB circuit board I soldered directly to the button pads. Being careful to keep the wires as far to the outside and a flat as possible kept the buttons working like usual. I also used the USB power to run the MSA to avoid having another power brick.

I think the controller box turned out pretty well. Playing on the real drum pads made a huge difference in response. The base pedal being piezo instead of a reed relay makes it require much less movement to trigger. I have been trying to play the songs using the proper cymbals and toms with required me to go back to medium difficulty for a couple of days. I am back to doing mostly hard now with a couple of songs completed on expert. Overall it has been a very cool experience. It is my first major hack and now that it is done I have to find something else to hack!

UPDATE - 5/22/05

Now that it has been a few week my skills are to back to where they were from before the hack. Playing on a real set is so much better. I really like that I have the ability to use the right pad for the right sound. I saw that Guitar Hero is going to have cymbals and I think Rock Band should have done that to start with. I wish I could say I was rocking on expert all the time but I just cant get my kick speed up. I might just have to add a double bass pedal.

I finally decided to open the box and post pictures.

I bought the MSA disassembled. That was a lot of soldering!

I could not get the wire to stick to the points that Flash listed on his site so I decided to use the buttons. The buttons still work and I can use the drum pads for navigation.