DrumPants 2.0 has launched on IndieGoGo.

It’s not an instrument or a conventional MIDI controller but, as its name suggests, a device that turns your body into an instrument. Once you’ve strapped on the wearable controllers you can use all your limbs – a bit like a real drummer does – to tap out beats and melodies or trigger visuals. (It’s pants the American way, sadly – we were hoping for some jury-rigged Y-fronts but clearly that’s still our utopian dream.)

You can upload your own custom sounds and there’s a metronome to keep you in time, plus it can be used as a looping pedal by connecting it to your tablet or smartphone and using apps like Loopy. It can also be hooked up to hundreds of MIDI/OSC applications like Reason, Ableton Live, Logic Pro and Audiobus.

The controllers can also be attached to your own drum kit to trigger extra sounds, or you could even use them to make your own physical games with Arduino or to interact with virtual reality set-ups. The designers also hope the controllers could be used to assist people with disabilities to communicate more easily.

Drumpants 2.0 is the latest iteration of the technology, which has been made open-source in order to encourage users to customise and upgrade their own kit.

See how it works in the video below and head to IndieGoGo if you want to back the project – $110 will get you the basic kit, but the minimum is $5. The name is stupid, but now we really want one. [via Music Radar]