Batteryless and Wireless Electric Drum System using Piezoelectric Generator with Power and Signal Source

Abstract

One problem with the plethora of electronic instruments in the music world today is all the wires and cables that need to be transported, plugged in, and managed. For an electronic drum set, the wires make setup complicated and look messy, and the difficulty of assembly and disassembly limits its use to one fixed place. A wireless system, on the other hand, would provide portability and greatly expand the range of venues where electronic drums could be used in place of acoustic ones. A batteryless self-powered wireless transmitter that sends a signal from a pad to a synthesizer has been developed. A piezoelectric generator functions both as the “Play” signal for the synthesizer and as the power source. The system employs analog FM modulation so that zero latency is theoretically supported in the radio transmission process. The same numbers of receivers are required to receive FM signals from multiple sensors/transmitters. A multi-channel receiver with FFT process is proposed, which can handle all of signals by single hardware. Experimental results for an electronic drum without any connecting wires fully demonstrated the feasibility of a self-powered wireless transmission system with a latency of 700 µs.