PIC16F877-Based eDrum Circuit

The project illustrates the design of electronic drums where detailed information on how to build an electronic trigger to MIDI converter module is found, based on PIC microcontroller along with the building of the triggers.

The eDrum design is built around a PIC16F877 RISC microcontroller form Microchip that runs at 20MHz while utilizing a 16×2 LCD with backlight and some op-amps. It also consists of one serial RS232 out, one MIDI out, 4 control buttons, 22 input gain potentiometers, 2 digital inputs, and 22 analog inputs.

The design can be considered as modular and easily expandable due to the use of PIV microcontroller and carefully designed assembly language firmware since the goal of the design isto use cheap and easy to find components. Since the edrum will not offer any drum kits or sounds, all that is need is the Trigger-to-MIDI conversion.

Some of the added features include an overflow indicator & VU meters on each channel, Yamaha/Roland compatible inputs, 4 mono piezo inputs, 6 cymbal inputs with choke, snare dual-piezo input, Hi-hat stereo input, 24 velocity sensitive trigger inputs with adjustable gain, and two-mode Hi-Hat pedal operation using pedal potentiometer & foot controller.

Rest of the story