Tsunami Super Wav and triggering using piezo/drum pads

Sensors Sound & Audio
1

Hi There

I have a few questions that I may of missed somewhere because they seem kind of obvious regarding triggering of the Tsunami board with your standard drum pads with piezo triggers.

  1. Can you just connect up a piezo trigger to a trigger input on the tsunami whack the trigger and a sound come out?

If no then cool I’ll continue with my MIDI trggering - if yes then…

  1. What would the trigger settings have to be in WT Config? and

  2. Would the triggered sounds be velocity sensitive?

Sorry I can’t seem to find this info anywhere

Cheers

Kevin G

2

No. When struck, piezo transducers produce voltage spikes which are both too high (can be up to 35V!) and too short to be connected to the digital input of any microcontroller. At best, it will be too short and be missed in an input scan, and at worst, the voltage level will damage the input.

This can be overcome with some additional hardware. A Schottky diode in series with the piezo, and a zener diode along with a resistor/capacitor in parallel, can limit the voltage level and extend the pulse. Google “arduino input piezo drum trigger circuit” (or some variation) to find some example circuits.

3

Thanks, I found it hard to get info on the voltage output of the piezos. For now problem solved by having drum pad triggers go into an old electronic drum brain (dtxpress 2) and then the midi output of that triggering the Tsunami

Cheers KG