Interfacing with commercial (Alesis) E-Drums?

JPaskaruk

New member
Hey yall, I saw an Alesis e-drum pad and cymbal at the thrift for cheap, so I grabbed em. Is interfacing these to the Teensy 4.1 I've got here as simple as hooking these up to ADC pins and monitoring them for voltage? Has anyone done this?

I see bits and bobs from E-drums all the time and I have plenty of ways to trigger drum samples via midi, and I have already done a few midi controller devices with Teensy so I'm all good on that end, just uncertain if this is just a straight up piezo that I could treat like any knock sensor type deal, or what. I think the cymbal is dual zone, for bell/rim, so there's that too.

I am also tossing around the idea of building a digital marimba, but not sure about monitoring pieces of wood.
 
I am not sure about Alesis but Roland's drum pads use (cheap) piezo sensors that require high impedance input and can produce output higher than 3.3V so you would need to use opamp buffer and protection circuit, so ADC input is not exposed to voltages outside 0...3.3.V range
 
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