Welcome the Stardust - an USB rechargable mid-range saber board

[Obi_1]

I'm happy to present you a new family member of the DIYino saber sound boards, the

Stardust

This tiny but powerful board is a mid-range member of the Arduino compatible DIYino boards, capitalizing on the already proven architecture
of the Prime and at the same time streamlining the design to give you a board which is easy to integrate into a saber hilt.
To this end I applied certain adjustments to the Prime architecture, like:

- replacing the bulky SD-card with a 16MByte on-board SPI Flash. No moving parts involved.
- swapping the DFPlayer MP3 chipset to a more advanced one, capable of handling SPI Flash
- using 3 instead of 6 driver channels for LEDs and other peripherials (making board smaller but still perfect for RGB LEDs and neopixel builds)
- it comes with an micro USB connector like the Prime v1.5
- the USB signals are broken out so you can hook up an external USB connector, serving as general access port (and more!)
- all connections necessary to operate LSOS or USaber type saber softwares are integarted on board, eliminating the need for on-board wiring
- The board can also operate on a single 3.7V battery, or using a small DC/DC to boost the voltage to 5V. No need to find room for 2 cells in the hilt.

But there is more! The Stardust is not a stripped-down version of the Prime! It incorporates a feature unique among the saber boards

USB charging of the battery

This opens up a whole new world of possibilities of hilt design and interaction with the electronics. Only a single interface suffices to reach all features:
- charging a single 3.7V Li-Ion/LiPo battery, via USB
- no charging device needed, no need for a big recharge port
- software updates can be flashed over USB
- the on-board SPI flash can be directly accessed over the USB as well, eliminating the need to take apart the hilt if you want a new set of sound fonts

I hope you like it and I will keep you updated about the board features!

[Thexter]

Wow! You never cease to amaze!

[profezzorn]

Very nice!
How big (small) is it?

[Obi_1]

Very nice!
How big (small) is it?

It's tiny. 50mm x 20mm x 7mm (length x width x height) For comparison, not much bigger than a standalone Arduino Nano.

[Don]

Nice new board.
The family is growing 

[JakeSoft]

I can't wait to get my hands on one of these. When I built my first Arduino saber all those years ago I never thought that there would be ever be a small programmable platform such as the DIYino, let alone a family of products! Keep up the good work.

[EXAR KUN]

Muy muy I love you!

Great new board. Imagine two of these in a smaller double-ended hilt

[Obi_1]

Muy muy I love you!

Great new board. Imagine two of these in a smaller double-ended hilt

Cheers!

I was thinking along the same lines! I have a build lying on my bench for quite some time now, I contemplated building in 2x Primes, but now with the Stardust it's going to be even simpler. Throw in a decoupler and they can be used as two independent sabers. Not to mention the effect of two 3W speakers playing different sound fonts...

[oswaldkefo]

This sounds very impressive. I'd love to use one of these in a build with a neopixel string. I'll have to wait for some wiring diagrams tho. Awesome board!
It's awesome to see how fast and how great the improvements to tho hobby are coming -even in the short time I've been in it.

[Obi_1]

Over the last couple of weeks I have been busy wiring up this new little thing in different setups wrt:
- LED
     - Star LED like Cree/Luxeon
     - neopixels
     - I also tried LED strings, but only full parallel, as max is 5V)
- supply scheme:
     - supply via single 3.7V LiIon/LiPo
     - using DC/DC to push up the 3.7V to 5V
     - and powering via USB (obviously only during charging)

So far all methods work fine. Clear recommendation is to use a small DC/DC, which is much smaller than a 2nd battery in series and enough still to provide the same audio output. But the board can operate as what became known as the single cell hack i.e. on a single 3.7V rechargable cell which now can be charged via the USB. I really like it!

Speaking of which I also tried now the charge status indication, it's a push/pull with the charger IC I use, so it can either be directly wired to an LED or to an analog port which can be used to poll it and use for instance an accend LED on a switch to notify the user the charging is completed.

All other "legacy" functions from the Prime are already verified to be working, only the sleep mode trials are still on the to-do list, but since the same concept is working fine on the Prime v1.5, I'm confindent that the same low power goals can be achieved with the Stardust.

I'll keep you updated about board verification as I make progress. I hope I can soon start series production of the board, I see a big potential in a mid-range board, which does not need an extra recharge port!

[Obi_1]

I've got quite a few inquiries about when the first Stardust Run will become available and what will be the price. To reach a broad audience I try to answer this question here.

Good news: I've got my first BIG commission for DIYino Prime v1. At the moment you can imaging this is prio1 for me to secure in the time allotted to this wonderful project. Consequence: managing a Run1 for Stardust will be delayed as long as I'm busy with the Prime order.

I expect therefore the Run1 for Stardust at end of May/early June. If you are interested, please drop me a PM so I can include you on the pre-order list.

Price-wise I need to do the math. The Stardust is a mid-range Arduino compatible board as opposed to the flag ship Prime, therefore the price will be for sure lower. My preliminary plan it to offer it for ~50 EUR/$.

Cheers!

[thatguyer]

Looks like a great board! I've been using DFPlayers for my sounds, and while the functionality is nice, I've found the quality of the boards themselves varies a lot. I've had to rip out some defective ones, which is a huge pain.

I'm just curious: when you order a run of boards, are you getting bare PCBs and adding the components yourself? Or are you ordering them from a place that will build a complete board with the components for you?

[Obi_1]

I have built up a nice supply chain, so I get the boards already fully assembled. I do the testing myself though... that is why I never had any bad board delivered to any of my customers (I had 2 returns for far, in the first case the guy filed through a trace and did not recognize, another guy asked me if I could replace a board he shorted by accident. Both of them got a replacement, I do care about customer satisfaction 

[Obi_1]

Finally I managed to gut one of my older sabers and replace the board inside with a Stardust running a newer LSOS version I developed especially for Star LED configuration (aka Luxeon, going well with all RGB star LED types like Tri-Cree, Luxeon Rebel you-name-what).

This is actually the first saber I've built for an in-hilt light source saber using my DIYino platform, as I'm focusing more on string sabers. It was long due and the result was more than worth the effort (it being close to 0, as the LSOS code already included all the features for all major blade types, I merely had to polish the code for a yet unchartered blade type domain  )

Even better, in this saber I included an external USB port for charging an programming, such that I do not need to touch the board itself for USB charging of the single 18650 battery. Facing outside I also soldered in an extra LED showing the charging status (yep, Stardust has that feature as well). So in a way this is the very first saber which can be USB-charged 

I did not make any audio editing to the video, a 3W audio driver is really this loud!

[jbkuma]

Looks great! Is it the same audio driver as on the DIYino Prime?