We recently had a chance to work with an innovative, new company called Drēm Trigger. I thought the project was a good example of the breadth of our capabilities, so I wanted to share some of the details with you.

About the company

Drēm Trigger (say “Dream Trigger”) is a startup company with a new approach to drum triggering. Their goal is to make Hybrid Drumming more affordable and simpler in order to expand the range of sounds available to a drummer who may not have the budget for a large number of drums. The basic concept of a drum trigger is that the drummer attaches some instrumentation to the drum which can sense when the drum is struck and then record and/or transform the sound. One example of this would be a drummer for a band who covers a lot of other bands’ music; outfitting their drum kit with drum triggers would allow them to completely transform the sound of their kit from song to song.

About the project

Drēm Trigger was referred to me at the end of their prototype phase with an electronic prototype in-hand. They had commissioned a product prototype firm to prove the concept, so they already had a device that worked fairly well, but they needed some improvements made before launching their crowdfunding campaign.

Our task was to test a different kind of sensor with the existing electronics. This required some additional circuitry to be designed as well as some signal processing software to run on their microprocessor. After testing out a couple of different hardware designs, we identified one that would give the response time that we needed and proceeded to design software algorithms which would reliably detect each drum hit. Finally, we fused our algorithms into the existing sensor’s algorithms and, with a little bit of tweaking, we had a fully-functional prototype.

Summary

The project took place over the course of about 5 weeks and both Swiftlet Technology and Drēm Trigger were satisfied with the outcome:

• From the client’s perspective, the device’s performance was improved to the point where it could be used the company’s crowdfunding video
• From Swiftlet’s perspective, it was an exciting project with many interesting challenges along the way
• Both parties agree that this is a business relationship where Swiftlet Technology was able to continually provide value to Drēm Trigger; from circuit design and testing, to algorithm design and implementation

For more information about Drēm Trigger, please visit their website at www.dremtrigger.com.