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Author Topic: Hello, and a new rainbow saber driver  (Read 1821 times)

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Offline ToyKeeper

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Hello, and a new rainbow saber driver
« on: December 22, 2017, 03:07:05 PM »
Hi, I'm new here.  I've mostly been active in the flashlight community, doing projects on BLF and maintaining the community firmware repository, but I've been kind of into lightsabers for the past year or so too.

Most sabers I've seen have some design choices and limitations which seem strange to me, and I've been kinda wanting to fix some of that.  Like, the .wav file-based sound fonts are fun sometimes but they don't seem to give a very realistic response, and I'd like to make sabers synthesize their sounds realtime instead.  Or perhaps a hybrid of the two methods.  I also find it odd that so many sabers use inline resistors to limit current, often shrink-wrapped and floating so they have no way to shed heat, instead of using current control.  And the RGB/RGBA sabers mostly seem pretty limited in terms of what they do with the colors.

So I've upgraded one of my sabers with my own custom driver and firmware.  It's light-only at this point, no sound, but it does fancier lighting than any others I've seen and adds some other things too.  Here's some of what I've made so far:

  • Lighting patterns are configurable on the saber itself, realtime, by basically turning knobs on a simplified analog-modelling synthesizer
  • Patterns can include multiple colors or even the full rainbow
  • Slots for 12 user-configurable saber personalities
  • Smooth fade on and off without stopping the lighting pattern
  • Momentary overdrive on button press (sorry, no accelerometer on this version)
  • Several reversible and stackable wave shapes plus rainbow and force lightning
  • Works with any emitter configuration from 1 to 4 emitters, as long as they form a spectrum (like R-G-B, R-A-G, R-A-G-B, Pr-G-B-UV, etc)
  • Current-controlled output for stable brightness as battery drops (no need for inline resistors to avoid blowing up LEDs)
  • Extra functions included: battery readout, soft lockout, self destruct (factory reset)
  • Standby time: ~10 years per charge using 3000 mAh 18650 cell (no kill key required, but having one makes the "self destruct" function easier to access)
  • Thermal regulation implemented in hardware, and support is also implemented in firmware but not compiled in by default since it's probably not needed
  • No need to manually set power levels for each channel; uses relatively intuitive realtime configuration instead
  • Requires only one button, a momentary non-latching type
  • Driver fits directly under the emitter pill / heat sink with wires going back for power and the switch
  • MCU is on the exposed side of the board for easy reflashing without soldering

Part of this is to allow each person's saber to have its own unique appearance, and part of it is to facilitate making pretty patterns in the air while swinging a saber around.  Also, sort of a proof of concept for later projects.  The synth engine is pretty simple but still reasonably flexible, and can be configured to copy pretty much every pattern I've seen on a saber in addition to a lot of things I haven't seen elsewhere.  For example, one can make it do a police flasher -- just configure it for a slow square wave going from red to blue plus a fast square wave from dim to bright.  Mostly the config is "pick some colors then turn knobs until it looks good".

I've been enjoying this in my stunt saber, but I'd still like to make a full version with sound.  That's a much bigger project though, and I'm not sure I'll have time to do it unless I can find a way to fund full-time development.  Any thoughts?  Is this even a thing other people are interested in?

Offline Sandpeople are people too

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Re: Hello, and a new rainbow saber driver
« Reply #1 on: December 22, 2017, 05:22:22 PM »
any video or still of the board in action?

Offline ToyKeeper

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« Reply #2 on: December 22, 2017, 05:34:54 PM »
any video or still of the board in action?

Not yet; it has been a bit too cold out lately to go out for spinning, and ... I'm camera-shy.  Hopefully I can get past that soon though, and put up a video.  :)

Offline ToyKeeper

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Re: Hello, and a new rainbow saber driver
« Reply #3 on: December 27, 2017, 12:46:12 PM »
Although I don't have a video yet, I can at least show a summary of the interface so far.

(edit: having some difficulty getting the forum to accept an image from my site; for some reason, it only seems to like imgur ... so, hints are welcome about how to get around that)

direct link in case image below isn't visible

« Last Edit: December 27, 2017, 02:15:25 PM by ToyKeeper »

 

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