Future rocker

Since before Mackenzie was even born, Allie has wanted her to be a drummer. Looking at houses in South Minneapolis a few years ago we pointed out rooms that'd be good for a drum kit (and some extra sound proofing).

I don't know if it was prophetic or what, but while she's not a drummer yet Mackenzie is certainly a percussionist! She loves beating things. And she does a pretty decent job of doing so in a way that resembles drumming.

We've recently dug out our Rock Band kit, and even upgraded this weekend from our old Wii set to a shiny used one for the PS3 that was an absolute steal. For weeks though, Kenzie has been pilfering the drum sticks and carting them around the house beating on things.

After a particularly fierce set on the windows this afternoon Allie coaxed her into hitting the actual drums instead, and she seemed to enjoy it!

With that in mind I dug around and tried to figure out a way to turn the PS3 Rock Band Drums into and "actual" drum kit. I know I'd seen reference to things like this in the past, and after a bit of searching and trying various combinations of software I came across this post:

http://lovehateubuntu.blogspot.com/2008/09/rock-band-drums-in-linux.html

In the followup, the author links to a project they started called Opendrums on Google Code. I downloaded the code, installed the required libraries on my Raspberry Pi and after a bit of futzing got everything working. Tomorrow I'll hook it up to the sound system in the living room and we'll get our little rocker playing!