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Author Topic: XSTREAM Open Beta  (Read 1086 times)

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Offline JakeSoft

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XSTREAM Open Beta
« on: February 20, 2021, 06:37:20 PM »
It's been a long time the making, but XSTREAM open beta is now live!

The global pandemic's impact on factors related to production of the DIYino Infinity boards has delayed production for the time being. Originally we wanted to roll out the Home Brew and the genuine Infinity boards at the same time.  Given the situation, we've deiced not to delay the release of the software any further and are beginning the home brew open beta today. In a way this is a good thing as it follows the tried and true tradition of releasing open platforms as a DIY kit spec before a more compact all-in-one board. It's territory users of FX-SaberOS and my previous gen STREAM system are already familiar with.

Features at a glance:
- Up to 10 sound fonts
- 12 blade profiles
- OmniSwing™ (our flavor of Smooth Swing)
- Power Up, Power Down, Lockup, Swing, Clash, and Blaster sound and light effects
- User friendly PC App for configuration and firmware upload
- Sound font selection memory (font won't revert after battery power is cut)
- Supports both RGB HP LED and Neopixel blades (up to 144 pixels)
- One-button or Two-button operation
- Adjustable motion sensitivity
- No programming skills required

Supported Font Formats:
A conversion tool is included that will adapt sound fonts for use with the XSTREAM system. Supported font input formats include:
- NEC
- CFX
- Proffie

The tool handles ensuring everything is at the right sample rate and file names expected by the firmware.

Notes on Features:
While we expect the feature set will grow as it matures, to start with we kept it simple by focusing on the most popular features for sabers today (pixel blades, dynamic swings, multi-font support, etc.). There is still plenty of room for optimization and enactment in future releases. For example, the 10 font limit is an arbitrary limit that is imposed by legacy code carried over from the old 8-bit STREAM system. In fact, this open beta will be a rolling baseline where it could change as often as every few days.

Philosophy:
This is an early release and we expect there will be some growing pains but ultimately this is supposed to be user friendly. Home Brew DIYino Infinity paired with the XSTREAM software is aimed squarely at those who don't mind the extra time with a soldering iron to build their own sound board in exchange for cost savings but who may not want to get a computer science degree to learn how to program. The only skills you should need to build an XSTREAM saber are those you probably already need to build any other light-and-sound saber including only basic computer literacy. All the software work has been done for you; it's plug and play!

Open Beta announcement video:


Full Demo video:


Download for free here:
https://github.com/JakeS0ft/XSTREAMOS



Offline SirRawThunderMan

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Re: XSTREAM Open Beta
« Reply #1 on: February 21, 2021, 03:17:28 AM »
You can sign me up, for a start. What sort of hardware are we looking at for the homebrew? from Andras' videos, it looked like one of the Adafruit Feather boards, an MPU6050, some kind of microSD/MP3 module (can't place which)
Better late than never.

Offline JakeSoft

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Re: XSTREAM Open Beta
« Reply #2 on: February 21, 2021, 07:11:40 AM »
You can sign me up, for a start. What sort of hardware are we looking at for the homebrew? from Andras' videos, it looked like one of the Adafruit Feather boards, an MPU6050, some kind of microSD/MP3 module (can't place which)

It seems I've called down the thunder! Welcome aboard!

The four main components of DIYino Infinity are
1) Adafruit Feather nRF52 Bluefruit LE - nRF52832
2) I2S Amplifier Breakout (recommend MAX98357, but any that support 22.05 KHz and 44.1 KHz sample rates should work)
3) MicroSD card SPI breakout board
4) MPU6050 breakout board (same as for FXSOS and old STREAM)

Beyond that, it depends on what variant you are building (RGB or Pixel). Those differences should be old hat and easy for you since I know you have a few home brew DIYino builds under your belt.

Note that while our wiring diagrams always show two buttons (main and aux), the second button (aux) is always optional. There is nothing to configure, just don't wire the second button if you don't want to use it or your hilt doesn't have space for it.

Check out the videos in the OP of this thread and the included documentation on the GitHub site. Most basic questions should be answered there.

Offline SirRawThunderMan

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Re: XSTREAM Open Beta
« Reply #3 on: February 21, 2021, 09:22:19 AM »
Hey, I'm always up for giving Open Source stuff a go.

Ok, that's a shopping list. I've got a few MPUs left over/that can be recycled, and the rest of the hardware shouldn't be too hard to get. Is there going to need to be a minimum read/write speed for the microSD card, as on Proffie, or will any old microSD work? Scratch that, that's listed in the github, my bad.

If I can get it working on a breadboard, it'll be time for my Scrapsaber to get upgrade 3.0.

edit- Ok, so I've got the extra step that my PC runs Linux rather than Windows. But with five seconds of console work, I've gotten both the XSTREAM GUI and the sound converter to open with OpenJDK 11. The GUI is detecting the right ports for Linux (TTY rather than COM), but I can't do much more than that until the hardware arrives and I get it all soldered up.

Assuming I can get it all working, I'd be willing to do you guys a write-up for how to get it running in Ubuntu. Hopefully, that should cover most linux distros.
« Last Edit: February 21, 2021, 03:24:40 PM by SirRawThunderMan »
Better late than never.

Offline JakeSoft

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Re: XSTREAM Open Beta
« Reply #4 on: February 22, 2021, 06:16:12 AM »
Hey, I'm always up for giving Open Source stuff a go.

Ok, that's a shopping list. I've got a few MPUs left over/that can be recycled, and the rest of the hardware shouldn't be too hard to get. Is there going to need to be a minimum read/write speed for the microSD card, as on Proffie, or will any old microSD work? Scratch that, that's listed in the github, my bad.

If I can get it working on a breadboard, it'll be time for my Scrapsaber to get upgrade 3.0.

edit- Ok, so I've got the extra step that my PC runs Linux rather than Windows. But with five seconds of console work, I've gotten both the XSTREAM GUI and the sound converter to open with OpenJDK 11. The GUI is detecting the right ports for Linux (TTY rather than COM), but I can't do much more than that until the hardware arrives and I get it all soldered up.

Assuming I can get it all working, I'd be willing to do you guys a write-up for how to get it running in Ubuntu. Hopefully, that should cover most linux distros.

While the GUI tools should be cross-compatible because they are Java-based, you won't be able to upload the firmware without Windows. Better set up a VM if you don't have access to a Windows machine.

Offline vargose

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Re: XSTREAM Open Beta
« Reply #5 on: May 16, 2021, 09:42:50 PM »
@Kolgrima can we expect a brew board for this in the future?

Offline jbkuma

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Re: XSTREAM Open Beta
« Reply #6 on: May 17, 2021, 10:01:42 AM »
@Kolgrima can we expect a brew board for this in the future?

We're working on further hardware development and there should be even more exciting features coming! Stay tuned.

 

retrousse