Rock Band with Electronic Drums (HOWTO)

[OldClownie]

OldClownie, I'm assuming you figured out how to wire up the power adapter plug to your msa? Could you share what you did, as I'm planning on doing the same

My MSA, along with whats left of my Rockband controller, is inside an 8x6x3 plastic enclosure that I bought at Radio Shack. I wanted to avoid having to hardwire my AC adapter to the MSA so I bought a power jack and put it on a switch.

The adapter I'm using (also from Radio Shack) is a 1amp with selectable voltage. And, I run the MSA on the 9v setting.

From the MSA. . . the "+" lead goes first to my on/off switch then from the second terminal of the switch to the "pin" connector of the power jack. The "G" lead of the MSA goes directly to the "shell" connector of the power jack.

The plug and jack are both size "N." With the plug set to "+ tip." It's one of those typical Radio Shack ones with the reversible polarity.

[silvhaze]

HH open and closed can be yellow , snare red , then blue ride and low tom with green crash and mid tom? OR some normal variation of how it should be. I havnt played the actual game too much so im not sure what it should be.



Also does anyone know why my kickpedal would throw things off when its brought into the mix? If i test it alone by shorting the wires it works. When i add the ground into the ground of the breadboard nothing else works but the kickdrum untill i take out the ground. That has nothing to do with sysex right?

[OldClownie]

HH open and closed can be yellow , snare red , then blue ride and low tom with green crash and mid tom? OR some normal variation of how it should be. I havnt played the actual game too much so im not sure what it should be.



Also does anyone know why my kickpedal would throw things off when its brought into the mix? If i test it alone by shorting the wires it works. When i add the ground into the ground of the breadboard nothing else works but the kickdrum untill i take out the ground. That has nothing to do with sysex right?

Okay, try sending this: F0 00 01 5D 02 01 03 26 03 2E 03 2A 03 33 03 29 03 31 03 2B 03 24 00 4F F7

. . .then go into edit mode, on your TD-3, and set your tom1 to send midi note 46.

As for the kick drum problem, I'm not even sure where to begin on that one.

[silvhaze]

Thx oldclownie

The config seems a tad weird though.

as green is ride and blue is crash.

This seems like a good setup

All snare hits -> red
Closed hi-hat, High Tom -> yellow
Open hi-hat, Ride (played as a ride), Medium Tom -> blue
Ride played as a crash, Crash, Floor Tom -> green
Bass -> orange

[MrSamurai]

Has anyone tried using LEDs for each output on the MSA? I've been trying to figure out if this would be possible. Is it as simple as hooking up the LED in series to the MSA and rock band controller board?

*edit*
I just realized that it's not going to be that simple, cause there's got to be a way to supply more power than is just output by the controller board. Damn, now I have no idea.

[Flash]

Also does anyone know why my kickpedal would throw things off when its brought into the mix? If i test it alone by shorting the wires it works. When i add the ground into the ground of the breadboard nothing else works but the kickdrum untill i take out the ground. That has nothing to do with sysex right?

This is a strange problem. I assume you've double and triple checked all your wiring and made sure all your wires are labelled correctly. Have you tried eliminating the breadboard (i.e. split your ground wire some other way, like with a barrier strip)?

Also, try eliminating the MSA and testing your wiring. I mean remove all wires from the MSA (hopefully you're using the screw-down terminals, not solder), keep everything in the breadboard, connect your bass/kick drum like you were saying and try shorting the other wires (red, yellow, blue, green) and see if it works. If you get the same result, then its not a problem with the MSA or SysEx. But if it works correctly, then its probably and MSA issue.

[OldClownie]

Thx oldclownie

The config seems a tad weird though.

as green is ride and blue is crash.

This seems like a good setup

All snare hits -> red
Closed hi-hat, High Tom -> yellow
Open hi-hat, Ride (played as a ride), Medium Tom -> blue
Ride played as a crash, Crash, Floor Tom -> green
Bass -> orange

Oh, yeah. I slid my crash cymbal down the set. . . put it over tom2 and set it to be the ride with my normal ride being a green set over my floor tom. That would explain why they're always flipped in my SysEx. I need it to be somewhat linear for my brain to process what I'm seeing on the screen and translate it.

The numbers are there. You just gotta edit those midi notes till it fits your setup.

[Rokkstar]

Dude that's cool!!

[bandaddy]

Has anyone tried using LEDs for each output on the MSA? I've been trying to figure out if this would be possible. Is it as simple as hooking up the LED in series to the MSA and rock band controller board?

*edit*
I just realized that it's not going to be that simple, cause there's got to be a way to supply more power than is just output by the controller board. Damn, now I have no idea.

Not necessarily. The LEDs use very low voltage and may work just fine that way. I'm putting them in the enclosure, whether they'll work or not I can't determine until I get mine together, or someone takes an actual voltage reading off the MSA output lines.

Didn't find time to get the drum set up this past weekend, or get anything wired up, so I'm still lagging behind on getting this done. Hopefully this week.

[silvhaze]

Yes this is a stange problem with the kickdrum. I have my msa soldered so i cant really try that without undoing everything .
Everything is wired on the msa properly that i know. But what i did being that im using a ps3 controller, is i wired directly to the buttons mine is very similar to brianwi;s picture at the bottom of page 6.
So at each button i have a ground wire and lead wire making it 8 wires for the 4 buttons and then the 2 for the kickdrum. WHen i wired the controller to the breadboard i wired all the lead or positive wires to the right spot on the breadboard. I then wired both positive and ground of the kickdrum when i went to put in just one of the 4 buttons grounds it made the controller not work in the game.
I unplug the kickdrum completey and the rest works fine without any grounds from buttons or controller going to the breadboard.
So im confused.
I was playing around with it and even got the craziest result where none of the buttons worked unless i used the kickdrum at the same time. IE the snare wouldnt trigger unless i played snare with the kickdrum at same time.

Right now i have it working again with no kickdrum. The wiring is all like flash wired his with the exception of my controller wired how i described above. And again im not using any ground from the controller atm.