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Author Topic: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house  (Read 34956 times)

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Offline JakeSoft

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #30 on: April 11, 2019, 12:21:25 PM »
I totally missed your video. Blame me, I wasn't even subscribed (I'm trying to "reduce" some of my digital life exposure) but I subscribed to your channel.
No I wasn't being cheeky at all, the reference above is rather about apple's upgrades, for some of it, nothing saber related.
I got that reference, no worries. As you can image with my involvement on the open-source software, I'm for Android all the way, so that gave me a little chuckle. Thanks for the sub!

As for addressing the questions, I'm sure we're all in the same boart, we want cool sabers. Sure, saber sound has become mainstream, parts price have come down and we don't necessarily need to choose between feature A or B because we can fit them all (along with a partner, we're implementing a bunch of cool easter eggs in the FW, it's so nice to have headroom).
I agree, and thank you for confirming my intuition on some points I predicted in one of my other videos. Mainly, 1) More features in entry-level products and 2) Flatter product tiers. In fact your "less and less sense" wording in your previous post was exactly how I phrased it in my video. That's where I thought you might be cheeky, but must be just a coincidence. It's nice to know we share a few neuron firing patterns in common.  :smiley:


Like my Tron disc from 2015, which is ledstrip by the way, with localized effect.
That's slick. I can tell it's a Crystal Focus, but never thought of using one that way.
« Last Edit: April 11, 2019, 12:25:55 PM by JakeSoft »

Offline jons3657

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #31 on: April 17, 2019, 10:37:39 AM »
Will CFX have a "Omnisaber" feature/any way to cast audio to an external and higher quality speaker?

Offline erv

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #32 on: April 19, 2019, 06:40:00 AM »
Will CFX have a "Omnisaber" feature/any way to cast audio to an external and higher quality speaker?

man, you've been pinging me everywhere...  :cheesy:

To echo on your other/side questions :
As Dmitry answered, it's really not difficult to use a BT transmitter to cast audio to a portable speaker. However, even if recent codecs have a lower latency, you can easily expect 35-120 ms of latency in the sound which I find totally dramatic when the core latency of the board is < 6-8ms and remains real-time. Also, the range is made really poor in metal hilts. It remains "doable" though we prefer lower latency techniques such as my wifi omnisabers. I've just brushed up my v2(.3) code with additional goodies. It both runs RICE configuration and omnisabers controls over long distances and will be directed toward live performance use.
While time is scarse at the moment, I'm also getting into developing my own BLE dongle cause that's something I've been wanting to deal with for a long time, plus I'm going to need this at work very soon.

For the good news, I've removed all dependencies regarding max font numbers and files, so it's just as many as you want, vs. boot load time still, but I get 171ms of boot lag with 19 fonts.

The audio menu is gaining a better HMI, you can really go quickly selecting a new font. I'm probably going to use the former "valsnd" (ie "validation required") to define a regular vs. speedup mode for selection, confirmation etc.

I also cranked up my audio engine and reduce latency of the motion-to-sound to reach 4.5ms average which is < or = to the achieved latency on NB4-PZ5 or CF9, except that this time it's in multitrack mode with 4 players going (font + smoothswing pair + background music track). Of course, latency relies on the SD card but we will provide the right one with the board, like for the previous boards.

Offline jons3657

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #33 on: April 22, 2019, 03:13:20 PM »
So... is that a yes? lol

Offline JakeSoft

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #34 on: April 22, 2019, 05:15:22 PM »
So... is that a yes? lol

Let's put it this way: The new platforms coming out (including of course CFX) could literally react to motion and playback smoothswing fonts, stream audio, and manage pixel blade effects, all while monitoring for email alerts and posting your saber usage stats to twitter all a the same time. It's just a matter of software and will/time to write it. The possibilities are going to stun some people.


Offline jons3657

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #35 on: April 23, 2019, 11:52:40 AM »
I guess that's what I'm getting at... is omnisaber/casting something that Erv is planning on writing? Correct me if I'm wrong, but CFX is not open source, right? So Erv would have to be the one to write it, and not somebody else. That's why I'm curious if he's planning on making it a feature or not. Proffie doesn't have any way to cast audio at this point, and Fredrik described it as a limitation/something that can not be easily implemented... and as far as I know, won't be implemented into Proffie V2 either.

Offline Yaraell_Ren

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #36 on: April 23, 2019, 12:59:02 PM »
In my opinion, I would rather have Erv focus on other features that are far more important (smoothswing, FW updater, Neopixel, etc) instead of Bluetooth cast capability.
I just don't see any appeal in casting the audio to external BT speaker. It not only diminishes realism, but also may potentially create latency issues and other bugs
BT cast capability should be on the bottom of the list for Erv in my humble opinion.

Offline K-2SO

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #37 on: April 23, 2019, 01:10:01 PM »
This thread is meant to be for sharing of “news”, not for extensive “debate”.  :police:



I find your arguments vague and unconvincing.

Quiet! *Slap* And there’s a fresh one if you mouth off again.

Offline erv

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #38 on: April 23, 2019, 01:49:56 PM »
I guess that's what I'm getting at... is omnisaber/casting something that Erv is planning on writing? Correct me if I'm wrong, but CFX is not open source, right? So Erv would have to be the one to write it, and not somebody else. That's why I'm curious if he's planning on making it a feature or not. Proffie doesn't have any way to cast audio at this point, and Fredrik described it as a limitation/something that can not be easily implemented... and as far as I know, won't be implemented into Proffie V2 either.

based on the *actual* number of people doing the core work, would it be open source or not, we just end doing it ourself, don't we :-) ?

As for casting audio, it only takes a simple hack to do it with a dongle (like for wireless control or configuration), so the CF doesn't really need to do it. For the record, casting audio has been demonstrated even with BT 2.0 modules, the latency was just insane and totally unrealistic. Range is also an issue like Dmitry said.

Offline JakeSoft

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #39 on: April 23, 2019, 07:04:50 PM »
I guess that's what I'm getting at... is omnisaber/casting something that Erv is planning on writing? Correct me if I'm wrong, but CFX is not open source, right? So Erv would have to be the one to write it, and not somebody else. That's why I'm curious if he's planning on making it a feature or not. Proffie doesn't have any way to cast audio at this point, and Fredrik described it as a limitation/something that can not be easily implemented... and as far as I know, won't be implemented into Proffie V2 either.

based on the *actual* number of people doing the core work, would it be open source or not, we just end doing it ourself, don't we :-) ?

As for casting audio, it only takes a simple hack to do it with a dongle (like for wireless control or configuration), so the CF doesn't really need to do it. For the record, casting audio has been demonstrated even with BT 2.0 modules, the latency was just insane and totally unrealistic. Range is also an issue like Dmitry said.

As Yaraell_Ren said, probably not a top priority but the dev nerd in me finds it an interesting technical problem to think about. I may play around with this on the open-source side, but we're in the same boat as Erv ATM: porting stuff to a new platform prioritizing only the most used features. FWIW, I think Erv's priorities are right where they should be for right now, but surely more possibilities in the future for whatever you might imagine given enough time.

Offline jons3657

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #40 on: April 24, 2019, 02:18:00 AM »
It's definitely not a priority... I get that. But for the build I'm working on, it's an important feature to have. That's the only reason I'm asking: I'm just trying to plan out how I'm gonna finish this thing.

Offline Sabermach TB

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #41 on: April 26, 2019, 06:46:39 PM »
Will CFX  be released in 2019?

Offline erv

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #42 on: April 26, 2019, 11:58:40 PM »
That's the only reason I'm asking: I'm just trying to plan out how I'm gonna finish this thing.

honestly, just cram a BT transmitter in there, it's really simple then call it a day ! :-)

Offline erv

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #43 on: May 19, 2019, 04:29:46 AM »
long time no post...

accent sequencer is finished, I've added a LARGE amount of additional configuration to the sequencer, now each of the 8 accents are configurable to "anything". Among anything, there's regular accent, pli accent, self pulsing, blade indicator, power indicator, blade mirror (channel of your choice), crystal chamber pulsing (color channel of your choice), audio flicker (regular & reversed). I'm glad to have audio flicker back, it used to be (IIRC) on CF6 then I had to abandon it for mirroring.
PLI is therefore intrinsically scalable from 1 to 8 accents. There are little restrictions on what can be what. Accents outputs can be anything, except for PWM type of accents (audio flicker, mirror or pulsing) which are working on accents #2, 5, 6, 7, 8 only. Audio flicker is still emulated on the other accents, and I'm going to do the same for mirror (less interest for pulsing).

The accent sequencer is also quite simplified, and easier to read / edit.

The various smoothswing modes have been implemented, it supports hybrid fonts and the pitch shifting is working as well (tuning in progress). We've also included a lot of easter eggs in the board.

Finally, regarding control and profiles, I have all the hooks for controlling blade profile change, color profile selection, and even on the fly font changing. I just need a little bit of (more) time to add the glue so that it brings Spectrum back, as well as tangible color selection, but it's really Lego, now.

Great progress overall, and converging fast. We're also organizing the board production in parallel. Myself, I'm struggling to allocate some time to finish a demo saber but since I'm at home tomorrow, I hope to get to this (all parts on my desk, just can't move my fingers out of the code editor !)

Offline Kreyhn

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Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
« Reply #44 on: May 19, 2019, 06:10:55 PM »
I don’t know how to describe how excited for this board I am. This sounds like an incredible piece of gadgetry.

 

retrousse