Hi ! After being away for some time, I'm back on forums !
My set of V1 crystal focus was "salvaged" so fast by customers, that I though I should put some more ideas I had in a new design, so here we are with V2.
I don't want to be thru engineer blabla talk, so here are the *features*
- K2, lux III and V compliant (need 7.2 / 7.4 batt pack for lux V). 1.3 A max
- power supply from 3.3V to 11V
- 28 mm x 56.8 mm x 10 mm (1.1" x 2.23" x 0.39")
- use a removable SD card to store sound and configuration. I'll sell an inexpensive SD card reader as well
- 29 mm 8 ohm speaker prewired
- 1w amp / volume adjustment with a little potentiometer on board
- current regulation - maintains the brightness of the blade during the whole batt life
- blade extension / retractation at power on/off simulated with my blade + blade films (ultimate diffuser)
- full custom sounds. You can make you own, record your dog or whatever and put it on the SD card
- energy shimmering. I think that it's what is called "movie flicker" in ultra board. Since it's not a pulse, but a random variation
effect, I've called it "candle effect" like the fluctuation of light of the flame of a candle.
- all parameters can be setup with "SD-config". Including sensitivity to get the board responding to your fighting style
- auxiliary button to activate other effects like blaster ray blocking and blade lockup. Uses a momentary button. Press and release = blaster blocking, press and maintain you get a blade lockup. Adjustable delays for those effects.
- handles latching OR momentary buttons / switches for activating the saber. Latching can be normally closed OR normally opened electrical contacts. Various tastes => various flavors
- 8 sounds of clash, 8 sounds of swing, hum, power on / off, blaster and blade lockup sounds.
- random sound playing OR linear sound playing (one slot after the other).
- seamless playback, no transition between sound. Sound a premixed using the sound mixing utility I'm providing on my website.
- Low battery flashing LED. Based on current measurement inside the core. Starts flashing (faster and faster) when measured current is not what was specified on the sd card.
- progressive power on LED. So cool to have an LED on the hilt that fades in and out according to the luxeon
- force feedback motor option. Will progressively rumble in and out with fade in and fade out effects of the luxeon, and depending on the kind of motor, you can feel perturbation force feedback during clash effect or blaster.
- autopower off of the luxeon when removing the sd card. Edit a parameter on the SD and put it back, saber will start again with the new settings.
that what we had for V1. Now the plus of V2 :
- 16 bits sounds !!! (22.050 KHz). Very clear and nice quality !
- 4 banks of sounds, each with its own configuration file. You can preset 4 differents sabers with differents sound fonts, but different energy shimmering, pitch, sensitivity, clash effect duration etc.
- each bank of sound can be described by a sound file in the root directory of the card. I made some test recording "one" "two" etc and passed the files in my voice deepener program I wrote to get a nice SW intonation. But you can call your banks with a more descriptive sound file like "ligth side configuration" "dark lord saber" or "my first baby lightsaber" if you like it. Easy way to browse your configuration.
Means that you can preset you hilt with FOUR configuration and recall them without the need to open the hilt/pommel to get in the saber gathering the SD card to rewrite it or swap it. Pressing the Aux button at start up will drive you in the bank browsing menu. It's not a vocal menu per se (Ultra is the guy you MUST congrat for this nice idea). The saber will "say" the name of the different configurations. Press 5 sec the aux button, bank is saved and saber starts. The selectec bank will be recalled next time.
- boot sound. Just like in a digital camera, you have this little sound logo (sometimes annoying). Allows to have the saber saying "yes my master" just like mine right now. Or don't put it in the root directory, you'll get a little beep. Don't want any sound at boot. Create an empty sound file of 100 ms and you're done.
- FORCE PUSH ! YES ! combination of a little movement of the hilt and pressing the aux button at the same time, just before, or even during the movement. One slot for the Force sound on each sound bank of course. Effect can be disabled
- static pitch shifting. Incline the board pointing the floor will lower the pitch of the hum. Applied as well on blade lockup. Amount of pitch variation setup on the sd card. Can be disabled
- DYNAMIC pitch shifting. Hardness of the swing is measured and can be applied to the swing sound. This way you'll never really get the same swing sound twice even with random sound selection. Can be disabled
- mute option. sometimes usefull when experimenting ;D And since the core is also the main board for omnisabers, my wireless version, you can have wireless + in the hilt but this is annoying. When using wireless you might want to mute in the hilt sound. Use one of the 4 sound banks / config files for the wireless settings.
- Blinking LEDS management ! sounds cheap idea, but I'm sure some of you will like it. I used to have a single LED wiring on the board, which was used to activate my bargraph PLI board.
Now I have 4 LEDs and a sequencer... as usual as an editable text file in each soundbank. 4 LEDS = 4 bits = 16 possibles patterns. You can specify a 16 stage sequence with delays between them, from 2ms to 60 sec. The sequencer can be stopped in the sequence by a 0 delay, like scrolling on 5 stages then stopping with all LEDs on. I'll add as well a random pattern possibility.
That's all for today. The last version of the PCB was assembled by my hands yesterday and was tested all day. Works great ! I can go for manufacturing a batch of PCB. I expect to have the first units by MAY ! (price should remain the same as V1)
Sorry for the long email, but there are tons of things in this new board ! ::)
Erv'