Space Drums - Play drums in thin air!

The Space Drums system operates by tracking the physical motion of the user's arms in a virtual 3D environment, translating kinetic gestures into triggered audio samples. At the core of the hardware setup are three ESP32-S3 microcontroller modules, which act as the central processing and wireless communication hubs. Attached to the motion-sensing smart sticks are two LSM6DS3TR-C Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs). These IMUs integrate accelerometers and gyroscopes to continuously measure linear acceleration and rotational velocity along multiple axes as the drumsticks are swung through the air. The ESP32-S3 boards read this raw kinematic data and process it to detect rapid changes in motion characteristic of a drum strike. Powering the system are two 2200 mAh Li-ion batteries, which are safely managed and recharged using two TP4056 Li-ion charging modules. The software environment relies on the Arduino IDE, utilizing specific sketches like space_drums_AI.ino and spaceDrums_kick.ino loaded onto the microcontrollers. Once the motion data is processed by the ESP32-S3 modules, it is transmitted to a connected smartphone or PC, where the software maps the spatial coordinates and triggers the corresponding virtual drum sounds in real time.