Give Your Performance Extra Flair with In-Drum Lighting

As shown in the video below, the RAV Vast drum makes beautiful sounds via a series of nine cutouts on its flying saucer-shaped body. This type of instrument is available in different forms, and can even be made at home if you have the proper DIY skills and pitch awareness. As cool as they are, however, up until today they’ve lacked a visual element to their performance.

Thanks to Steven Arcangeli’s sound reactive drum light, you can now have a drum that not only sounds awesome, but also produces a brilliant glow from inside along with the beat. The device uses a small microphone to sense drum sounds, and an Adafruit Gemma V2 to translate this musical input into pulses from a NeoPixel ring. Reusable adhesive keeps it attached to the instrument so that it’s always available for impromptu jam sessions.

The project write-up notes that the build costs $40.75+tax+shipping, though this could be much cheaper if you’ve got a well-stocked parts bin, and/or by making substitutions when expedient. Additionally, while it’s designed for a RAV Vast drum, it would seem that any drum, or musical instrument for that matter, could take advantage of this hack to give performances a bit more panache.