I find myself playing the air drums rather regularly, and the drum set on Rock Band is by far my favorite instrument, but neither of those hold a candle to what Maayan Migdal has up his sleeve. My air drums don’t make real music. My Rock Band drums do, but they also take up a hunk of space in my room. His make real music and are invisible.
With a MIDI device and a little help from Arduino, Migdal has built a set of real-life air drums. Migdal cut the rake part off of a few garden rakes for the drum sticks, and added accelerometers and USB ports to each. The left stick takes care of the hi-hat, while the right stick has two separate modules that cover the snare and crash cymbals.
From there, he went on to fix up some sandal-esque foot pedals. Actually, they are more like foot pedal-esque sandals. Well, either way he stuck a pair of sensors into his flip-flops — the left, an accelerometer to pick up the bass drum, and the right, a light sensor to pull in the hi-hat pedal.
Voila! Next-gen air drums are born.
Clearly, Mr. Migdal has a knack for creating invisible instruments. If he can figure out a music-playing air guitar, he may just give Rock Band a run for its money. Check out the video from Hack A Day after the break.