Simple how-to for beginner?

[HugoW1975]

Hi,
I am looking for something to convert the piezo signals in my drum set (acoustic set with mesh heads and home-brew piezo sensors) to MIDI over USB, so I can plug in into my laptop which runs Reaper and SSD5.5. I know very little about electronics, I have made / copied several Arduin projects in the monkey-see, monkey-do range. Is this project something usably for me? I have an ESP32-S3 (which is USB native, I believe). I found the schematics-pdf, here, that's easy to arrange. But I will need a very good how-to to get going. Is that available somewhere?
Cheers,
Hugo

[3hhh]

Hi!

But I will need a very good how-to to get going. Is that available somewhere?

What do you expect in such a how-to? There's the manual in the doc folder as well as the discussions on this forum. And yes, the manual may be a bit short / has room for pull requests... The Changelog may be helpful though, too. You can also see in [1] how to build edrumulus on ubuntu. Probably you should start with a single tom and a breadboard with a single prototype 2 circuit connected to a single analog input on the ESP32. Then you need to modify the edrumulus PINs to match your setup, compile it, flash it & test. The project in total is still somewhat experimental imho and doesn't provide an easy path to success, but rather many iterative ways for many pieces of hardware and software combinations. I appreciate that as it makes it more flexible, but of course it means you need to invest more time to learn stuff. [1] https://github.com/corrados/edrumulus/blob/main/.github/workflows/main.yml

[godden-sys]

Hi!

I'm joining @HugoW1975 to ask a few questions that could be added here to help.

Considering the Changelog [https://github.com/corrados/edrumulus/blob/main/doc/ChangeLog.md#2023-06-27-r08-new-case-for-prototype-5]:

1. Could you indicate which distro for the Raspberry pi 3b you used?

2. Could you indicate if this 3D audio card that appears there on the change log page needed any extra configuration to run on the Raspi?

This type of information would be very valuable so that we can do a step-by-step guide on this project that interests us so much!

Thank you very much, master Corrados, for your work on this!!

[corrados]

Sure, I use Pi OS Lite and the 3D audio card did not need an extra configuration.

[HugoW1975]

Hi, sorry for the late reply. Hobby time is scarce, lately, and the time I do have I mostly play the drums.

I dug in a little deeper in the Edumulus. I downloaded the PDF schematic. This seems pretty clear. I would also like to add one crash cymbal. Schematic-weise that seems easy, although I need to chose the correct GPIOs. Any suggestions on which ones?

Then the software. I'd like to run it on my ESP32 S3 Dev board, mounted to a PCB conditioning the signals. MIDI over USB out. I think I read this is possible. I downloaded the edrumules.ino and .h files. I cannot get Arduino to install the .h library. It cannot find it in the normal search window and I can only add a ZIP file. I zipped the .h file, for Arduino to unpack and install, but to no avail. Please advise.

Getting back to adding the second crash; is that as easy as making this change, from

// analog pins setup: snare | kick | hi-hat | hi-hat-ctrl | crash | tom1 | ride | tom2 | tom3 static int analog_pins4[] = { 36, 33, 32, 25, 34, 39, 27, 12, 15 }; static int analog_pins_rimshot4[] = { 35, -1, 26, -1, 14, -1, 13, -1, -1 };
to

// analog pins setup: snare | kick | hi-hat | hi-hat-ctrl | crash1 | crash2 | tom1 | ride | tom2 | tom3 static int analog_pins4[] = { 36, 33, 32, 25, 34, new, 39, 27, 12, 15 }; static int analog_pins_rimshot4[] = { 35, -1, 26, -1, 14, new, -1, 13, -1, -1 };
That seems too easy, there must be more to it...

Anyway, I am working on the PCB to have it made in China. I will use through-hole parts to make it simple for me to assemble and I have the idea to mount it inside and old snare drum, which is equiped with a mesh head and sensors.

Cheers,

Hugo

[3hhh]

Then the software. I'd like to run it on my ESP32 S3 Dev board, mounted to a PCB conditioning the signals. MIDI over USB out. I think I read this is possible. I downloaded the edrumules.ino and .h files. I cannot get Arduino to install the .h library. It cannot find it in the normal search window and I can only add a ZIP file. I zipped the .h file, for Arduino to unpack and install, but to no avail. Please advise.

You can try platformio instead.

That seems too easy, there must be more to it...

You need to append them in the end as the positions matter. At most 3 more are currently supported. You'll also want to edit the pad_names list in the tools/edrumulus_gui.py file, but that should be it.

[HugoW1975]

Thank you. VSC and Platform IO, I used that a LONG time ago to update things on my old 3D printer firmware. I need to freshen up on that one...

I changed the code inthe ino file, lines 24 up to 26:
// analog pins setup: snare | kick | hi-hat | hi-hat-ctrl | crash1 | tom1 | ride | tom2 | tom3 | crash2 static int analog_pins4[] = { 36, 33, 32, 25, 34, 39, 27, 12, 15, 37 }; static int analog_pins_rimshot4[] = { 35, -1, 26, -1, 14, -1, 13, -1, -1, 16 };

In the edrumuls_gui.py, line 69:
pad_names = ["snare", "kick", "hi-hat", "ctrl", "crash1", "tom1", "ride", "tom2", "tom3" , "crash2"]

Is that all? I think I need to tell the software which pad is which type?

I'll now go look into how to upload to the ESP32 S3 board, it has been a while...
Cheers,

Hugo

[3hhh]

Is that all? I think I need to tell the software which pad is which type?

Yes, that should be all, if the pads are supported. The remaining configuration happens at runtime via the edrumulus_gui.py tool.

For unsupported pads you'd have to analyse their signals via octave to get them supported. There's some info in the doc folder as well as some discussions in this forum (e.g. my Millenium MPS 750x one).

[HugoW1975]

Great, thanks. I really appreciate all the help. But I'm still not there, yet. I tried uploading to the ESP32-S3, as that is USB native and I think I need that to get the MIDI signal to my laptop. But it will only upload to a normal ESP32 (I had one laying around), not to the S3. In the readmy file it says the -S3 is supported, should I 'activate' it somewhere in the code? I cannot seem to find where. I can find various mentions of ESP32S3 in the hardware.cpp.

[EDIT] I removed all ';' in this section:
[env:esp32-s3-devkitc-1] platform = espressif32 board = esp32-s3-devkitc-1 build_unflags = -D ARDUINO_USB_MODE=1 build_flags = -D USE_TINYUSB=1 -D ARDUINO_USB_MODE=0 -D ARDUINO_USB_CDC_ON_BOOT=1 '-D CFG_TUSB_CONFIG_FILE="${platformio.core_dir}/packages/framework-arduinoespressif32/tools/sdk/esp32s3/;include/arduino_tinyusb/include/tusb_config.h"' lib_archive = no lib_deps = ${env.lib_deps} adafruit/Adafruit TinyUSB Library
in platformio.ini. I do get more errors, now, so something has changed, but not yet for the better.

[/EDIT]

Cheers,

Hugo

[3hhh]

On 6/4/25 15:09, HugoW1975 wrote: Great, thanks. I really appreciate all the help. But I'm still not there, yet. I tried uploading to the ESP32-S3, as that is USB native and I think I need that to get the MIDI signal to my laptop. But it will only upload to a normal ESP32 (I had one laying around), not to the S3. In the readmy file it says the -S3 is supported, should I 'activate' it somewhere in the code? I cannot seem to find where.

Check the platformio.ini file. Looks like it was recently commented out, though, not sure why exactly. I use a Teensy 4.1, so I cannot help you. @corrados ?

[HugoW1975]

Thanks. I just checked, don't know if it matters; my board is an ESP32-S3-VROOM-1. And if there is a simple way to use the regular ESP32 board (which does upload) and get the MIDI signal from there to the laptop/daw/plugin, I am all for it. The S3 is not my goal.

Cheers,

Hugo

[corrados]

In the readmy file it says the -S3 is supported, should I 'activate' it somewhere in the code? I cannot seem to find where.

In the Arduino IDE under Tools->Board you can select a board which uses S3. This should compile and run fine. Unfortunately, I do not have a protype hardware which uses the S3 so I cannot assure that it works with a full drum set. The only test I did was using an S3 with just one pad input. And that worked for me.

[HugoW1975]

Well, progress. First of all, I now start to understand I do not need the S3, and even if I use it, it doesn't give MIDI out over the USB. So, back to the regular ESP32 board to which I could compile and upload succesfully. I also thought I needed access to the ESP32 board to run that gui.py file, I finally figured out I need to run that file on my laptop, using PowerShell, after installing Python. This is what I meant with a how-to. The manual just tells me to run that file, not to install python, use PowerShell, etc. But, I finally figured that out. And something did indeed happen, but I don't think it's right:

PS C:\Users\hugow> cd desktop
PS C:\Users\hugow\desktop> cd edrumulus-main
PS C:\Users\hugow\desktop\edrumulus-main> cd tools
PS C:\Users\hugow\desktop\edrumulus-main\tools> python edrumulus_gui.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\hugow\desktop\edrumulus-main\tools\edrumulus_gui.py", line 38, in
import serial
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'serial'
PS C:\Users\hugow\desktop\edrumulus-main\tools>

Yes, I cd'd to the directory and from there ran the file. Something did indeed happen, but it gives an error. I can find that line in the file when opening it in VCS, but I don't know what it wrong or how to fix it. I tried 'python edrumulus_gui.py serial COM6' as well (board is connected on COM6), but the result is the same.

Oh, BTW, I tried the hello.py example and that works, so Python is basically functional.

Any advice is welcome.
Cheers,

Hugo

[3hhh]

Actually you were expected to run the run_edrumulus.sh script on a Raspberry Pi or ubuntu machine. It installs python and all related requirements and also runs the edrumulus_gui.py script, which is the ncurses GUI to control edrumulus at runtime.

run_edrumulus.sh however doesn't work super well for all purposes, i.e. you might have to adapt it to yours.

I'm not sure how to do it on Windows (I use ubuntu), but I guess you could try to use cygwin et al.

[corrados]

Actually not expected to only be run on a Raspberry Pi. edrumulus_gui is intended to be used on any of the operating systems.

Regarding your error message, this is what chatGPT tells me about it:

The error message:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'serial'

means that Python cannot find the serial module, which is part of the pyserial library.
✅ Solution: Install pyserial

To fix this, open your command prompt or PowerShell and run:

pip install pyserial

[3hhh]

Yes, and there are some more dependencies here.
The run_edrumulus.sh script won't easily run on Windows though - my statement was about that.

Btw I'd heavily recommend against the Raspberry Pi idea as real-time audio is hard on any OS and especially hard on a Raspberry Pi. Simply use the strongest PC you have as long as you're not limited on space.
There are tons of guides out there on how to tune jackd2 for your needs. Personally I'd recommend rtcqs and liquorix.

[corrados]

The run_edrumulus.sh script won't easily run on Windows though - my statement was about that.

Ah, ok. Yes, run_edrumulus.sh is only intended for Raspberry Pi/Linux. edrumulus_gui.py is intended for all operating systems.

[corrados]

Here is a link to your other thread to avoid that we answer the same things twice: https://forum.arduino.cc/t/usb-uart-what-do-i-need-to-do/1386984