Clutching My Nuts

Bugger me, this design task has been breaking my brain! But I've broken its back, I think. At rest, they're locked off at the "sizzle" position. Lift the top hat to open them for a ringing sound. Lift the bottom one to close them for the "tick." Tiss, tiss, tiss, ting^-suppˇ! The rest is just a matter of four solenoids, one to lift the bottom hat, one to lift the top hat, on for left beater and one to operate the right beater.

"What the HELL are you raving about, Crunchy?!" you ask. The robotic drums, silly!!! Since I gave up on ever getting a usable way of having car door lock actuators to operate quickly enough to make it work like a "real drummer", and went with solenoids for motive force, the "hats" have been bugging me. It was as simple as using two clutches! You know, the thing that holds the top cymbal on the rod which the pedal pulls down! Bottom cymbal loosely over the pedal riser, held in plase by a lifting mech, top cymbal held in place over the pedal riser by another lifting mech, all adjusted so that, at rest, the edges of both cymbals are just touching and the bottom mech lifts to close while the top mech lifts to open!!!

But yeah, getting here broke my brain!

Meanwhile, the simple hitting of things simply works using solenoids. It's just a matter of hitting 12v solenoids with 24v (100 watts) for just so long as necessary to not exceed an RMS power of 24W (the solenoid's continuous work rating) at 285BPM on fours - a 50% duty cycle at 285BPM (19 hits/second, on for 250mS) but only a 12.5% duty cycle at 30BPM, even though the on time is still 250mS. So the machinery runs warmer on faster songs, but never so warm as to overheat or burn out. Then, to control the "velocity" (the measure of musical loudness used by MIDI notes), pulsewidth modulate that on-pulse at between 128 and 255. (Digispeak for half power to full power in 127 steps of MIDI velocity values.)

In short, it all can work. In theory. In fact, the electricals all work in circuit and code simulations, so they should work on a real circuit board. Eventually. Right?

See, it's easy! You understand me now, I'm sure. If you don't, I guess you're not a techy, or not techy in the music production way. That's OK. My point is, my brain's no longer breaking on the mechanicals of doing HiHat nuance with two binary states of on and off.