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The S.A.B.E.R. GUILD: Saber Manufacturers => Plecter Labs => Topic started by: erv on February 18, 2019, 01:04:24 AM

Title: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on February 18, 2019, 01:04:24 AM
Greetings everyone, long time no post and I figured I would give some news about current dev and timeline :-)

First off, I have been relatively distant from internet and social media and forum, mostly because I've been working on my new board. I've received some questions but I've essentially been reading a lot of things regarding plecterlabs and myself (well I for sure didn't read everything). I thought I'll also use that post to answer some of those things


CF 10, neopixel and what not :

back in mid 2017, when I was finishing CF9 and CS / PRIZM with neopixel support it became obvious that the current set of boards (understand "processor" or MCU) would not last much longer. To answer to the whole negativity about CF9 not supporting neopixel, I simply hit the limiting factor of my chip series with both RAM (volatile) and FLASH (non-volatile) memories (98% full).

For the tech-savvy or simply for those who are interested, I've been programming microcontrollers and doing embedded electronics since 1995 when I started creating sensor to MIDI digitizers to make custom and configurable musical controllers. I got lucky to get started with (at that time) microchip 16C84 MCU with a glorious 1kB of RAM and only assembler programming available. During the dev of the first sound controllers / pre-CF (late 2005), it was running on a 18F452 with 1.5kb of RAM and was at that time already reading sample accurate, 22kHz / 16 bits in 2007, with a gap-less hum looping. In comparison, most of the DUNIO-like boards nowadays with audio playback still rely on an external, dedicated chip or processor to read the SD card and output audio, and feature a native gap (counter-measured with ugly static timings and fixed sound durations).
Just to say you can do a lot with little resources. Still, the increasing of the saber scenario and the configurability of the board soon lead to a lot of code to be written and even if the CF9 / CS4.5 / PZ5.5 HW (they have the same processor) can handle multitrack playback (like the CF does) you can't fit it in the chip if you add neopixel, and conversely.

In practice, it leads to the question "why didn't you get a bigger chip". Sure :-) The reality is that MCU manufacturers tend to propose more RAM+FLASH in bigger package with more leads as well. Along the years, we looked at the MCU range from microchip and saw this as a pattern. The current MCU with just 4 times the FLASH and 10 times the RAM would do plenty, it's just not there. We looked at the PIC32 back in the day (in 2004 when I designed the lab's wifi digitizer) and the watt/MHz was so bad that we skipped that platform, especially for handheld / wearable technology.

so I kept that architecture afloat as long as possible : when you invest a lot of knowledge & learning in a platform, that's the way you can quickly implement new things for the scenario part which is of course the best part. That's a double edge sword as it links you deeply with a HW platform that you know by heat and that is hard to leave. Obviously, that is part of the massive passive-agressive things I've received like "oh I don't know he can't just move to platform XXX". Well, things are probably simpler when you don't have to design optimized low level drivers for your peripherals (sensors, ledstrip, SD card) or just take what others do.

So in november 2017, finally selected a new platform to move to after shifting the CF9 to the market. Thanks to the recent fusion-acquisition from my former chip manufacturer, new interesting stuff came to their portfolio. The result was a wonderful 32 bit platform (yes, I know "like everyone else in the saber field now" *spits*). I carefully selected it for some of its peripherals and integrated controllers and the massive amount of resources, RAM, FLASH and such. Best part is, sticking with my former chip family means perserving some of my work pipe, including supplies and factory service in malaysia.

The down sides
well, mostly time. Learning something news is in my case always enjoyable, the problem is migrating almost 15 years of dev habits to the new thing for which any tiny low level detail becomes another project. That started with the SD card support and audio playback for which I'm not just banging SPI (for the ones interested). The older chip was like 360 page long user's manual plus peripherals addendum, new chip manual is 2000+ page long (yikes).

So, I wrapped up a proto board in january after CF came out and worked most of the low level stuff for a few months, on my spare time, while finishing the house projects and while phasing the EU production to our manufacturing thanks to Elegant Weapons.
By the end of august, I had most of my core ready and working with 2 types of tool chains, and I started porting the scenario of CF + neopixel (from CS).

Of course, what isn't said is that it's almost a from-the-ground-up rewrite, since my former compiler was C and I had been crying for more modularity in my code structure for years (not that it's impossible with C but... well, coders & dev know what it means). Now that I migrated to ARM (doh) I could finally express all that code in C++, but that requested a complete rewrite of pretty much everything. That might sound sort of weird because it feels like it's project that could be easier to "port". Well, I could have stayed in C and "just do the port" without touching the structure, that would have been much faster, but so limited, hence the real effort I made.


Time, illusions and delusions
People probably still believe that I run plecter labs for a living, all day long, 24/7, which isn't the case (day job). Fortunately, my props interest match pretty well with the dev I do by day, so for the past year I've been working for both sides "at the same time" so to speak but still, I have other responsibilities. While some of us know what a project time line is, reality of things is ignored (and I don't know why). I mean projects like the teensy saber (-> proffie) still used like 3 years to come to market in its final form, with the work of mostly a single person and an existing code base (which I'm not criticizing, I'm an arduino user and even had dinner with Banzi back in the day). More recently, the Waan from Solaari, a start-up with several people invested in the project claim 2 years of dev (to reach a 70ms latency soundboard and a plain jane hilt design... #lol). So yes, things take time, and even if it's never the right moment to do it, migrating to something new means no fun time writing an interaction scenario like some others can enjoy at the moment (and which I've been as well, until recently).
So to sum it up, I follow my humble process of embedded developer. I know some stigmatized the fact I'm a "black box" dev, I'll try to improve this in the future. I also have an arduino core in the work but it's not quite ready yet.


Firmware update
Another question that popped up, and it's very reasonable. Without going again on "history" and such, just saying that the CF had a bootloader until about 2007. I used it extensively at that time as I was traveling quite a lot and I spent hours coding in the train between Paris, Orleans, Brussels and Amsterdam. The bootloader was then removed from the system due to legal threats I received back then. Those questions are absent to most of the newcomers and "recent" board developers but certain things haven't been so simple (down to Uncle George telling you to change you website font, this sort of thing).

Past is past. For reasons stated above (resources / RAM limitations, mostly) I didn't try to bring any FW updater in the older generation and rather bring one the new board.
That has been coded during the xmas holidays and there's not a nice updater via the SD card. The FW updater will accessible by the vocal menu for quick operation, and also via a recovery mode at boot / power cycling time. No special switch nor special GPIO for this purpose.
Specs wise, the FW update can be monitored via the USB serial port in any serial terminal program (docklight, coolterm or even putty). Flashing the current FW (which uses only 16% of the chip flash and like 4% of RAM => loads of headroom) takes approx. half a second. When monitoring the update process via the serial port, there's also a small command interpreter to force reboot, relaunch the flashing process etc.
0.5 to 1s remains short enough (IMHO) to make the update process painless and isn't an obstacle to do it "often" which will of course increase (a great deal) the amount of FW releases. I yet have to set a page up on my website but the "night builds" section is ready, I'll start populating things there as soon as the board goes in the wild.
FW update can also be done "blind" with no monitoring even if I always recommend to watch the log via the serial port, because it's really simple to do with simple and free tools.


WIP / TODO list
Right now, I'm finishing some C++ organization and classes for the blade handling. Most of the sound aspects have been take care of, from low level optimized drivers to data storage and configuration files. Just like color definitions and profiles, I have to re-enable the accent sequencers and the PLI "modules" which exist on their own, but aren't merged with the main code yet. Those are simpler task than working on the core, so it's progressing fast now.
The remaining "big" task is implementing the USB (MSD) access of the SD card. Most of the enumeration work and code is ready and works, but I haven't bound the SCSI to the SD card sector access routines yet. It's mostly a Lego work to complete now but I first want to have the CF scenario to be re established and merged with the CS features, Spectrum and so on before I tackle this. Also, while it's an important feature (and it's been demanded for sure), I believe it can be updated a few weeks after the first release. After all, that's what has happened with other boards and I'm sure everyone is busy enough to understand why things are coming out of the pipe one after the other.
Finally, regarding the USB / SD access, that will of course allow to change the fonts & configuration files via USB. I don't have writing speed test to compare with right now but based on the optimized SD driver I've implemented (and how fast reading goes), it could fairly compete with a computer SD card writer, at least to a point of not being a complete bottleneck. Also, USB access will allow for dropping a FW file in the root dir of the card then trigger an update, bringing a really simple FW update system, with the SD card hardly being removed.

To end on this, the board now has (thanks to increased RAM resources) a fully featured FAT instead of the tiny implementation I wrote from microsoft white papers back in 2005. While it's recommended on the final stage of a sound package (installed in a saber) to have a un-fragmented SD card, no voodoo dance is required anymore and it supports on-the-fly file replacement, deletion etc. I kept putting a lot of work in the optimization of this, down to the boot time and configuration load times.
The boot process including configuration files loading & parsing, along with the sound font scanning takes about 13ms. That might increase to 20ms once I have the accent sequencer back but no drastic change and a fast boot experience.

The board latency is currently 6ms in multitrack mode and might go down a little bit once I have consolidated all the required track and players (smoothswing). Speaking of latency and audio resolution, I'm actually glad that it (finally) became a thing for a lot more people. Sure, it has brought some competition (which isn't bad per say) but it's good point quality wise that those 2 topics have been also addressed by others. I was a tad "sad" to get bashed when I measured Scott's board latency (formerly 60ms) and audio resolution (9.5 bit) with only factual information. Not naming NEC here with a pointing finger nor bashing, it's just the topic and the so-called NEC war that is coming back and forth. It was also said that the source of it was multi track vs monophonic fonts. At the end (and it's just my point of view) it's just a matter of quality : with the HW designed *at that time*, I pushed for factual implementation of ideas that would provide the best possible user experience. Those include a super short response time (4.6ms) and true 16 bit dynamic range since 2007. I'm glad modern HW has picked up on this to provide a proper multitrack while preserving a low latency and that the user experience remains a core feature (real time audio is defined by the state-of-the-art < 10ms as a rule of the thumb, but can be requested as low as 2-4 ms for certain percussive instruments and professional musicians).

That's it for now, back to coding. I'll keep updating this thread to share news with you guys. Feel free to ask questions, I'll try to be reactive.

Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Greebles on February 18, 2019, 05:48:04 AM
I love the Plextor products so keep up the good work!


Loyal Plector Customer.


-Denzil
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Yaraell_Ren on February 18, 2019, 06:19:14 AM
WOW amazing update!
I still need to read this post multiple times to understand most things (even then I probably won't understand all the coding details)
But... CFX with Neopixel, FW updater, AND Smoothswing??
This will be special  :huh:
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: ShtokyD on February 18, 2019, 06:36:19 AM
Great news Erv! And "CFX" name sounds awesome lol! D*mn, I feel like a lot of new commands and features to add in my upcoming "ForceSync" mobile Bluetooth R.I.C.E. app for a new CF...
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: ShtokyD on February 18, 2019, 07:05:15 AM
Btw, are you going to use a 3 Watt speaker amp Erv? Proffieboard uses a 3W one and it sounds absolutely awesome with a better 3-4W speakers like a TCS (Train Control Systems) WOWsound high bass one. I did some comparison tests between various popular speakers: 4W TCS WOWsound speaker vs. other comparison / Crystal Focus vs. Proffieboard (https://youtu.be/0o8a70O8c48)
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erlomd on February 18, 2019, 01:02:49 PM
As always, Im very much looking forward to your products ERV! the ease of installation and the "works right out of the box" boards that you have brought us all these years has really been a blessing in this hobby.

since the CF9, some of us have been a little spoiled with the invention of "smoothswing" in some open sourced boards on the market.

It has revolutionized the way we all experience a lightsaber in action. but it has also brought many limitations on how easily the board can be installed by some of us whom are not so electronically inclined...(not to mention that in some cases, the need to use more than 1 board)...

Complications arise such as downloading additional software, creating lines of code, uploading these codes to the board...etc (not to mention, hoping it all works after all that and not having to throw a hammer at your computer screen if it doesn't!).  :evil:

Your products have always allowed for ease of use and giving us various tiers of boards in terms of how advanced and complicated you want the lightsaber to be.

I not only hope that your "smoothswing" be available in your CF advanced boards, but also be available to the entry level installer using an NB as you have always accomplished!  :afro:
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Megtooth Sith on February 18, 2019, 06:22:11 PM
Awesome Erv!  Looking forward to it!

Tom
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Darth Smorgis on February 18, 2019, 06:44:31 PM
Thanks for sharing Erv.  Looking forward to the future of Plecter Labs and specifically the possibilities of Crystal Focus aka Buttered Toast moving forward.  I love readiing your announcements and getting excited at the potential of a new CF release.  Takes me back to the good old days.
Call me old fashioned, but I only have room for Plecter in my life.  Keep up the good work.  Cheers!
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: JakeSoft on February 18, 2019, 08:06:34 PM
Thanks for these insights. As a dev, I appreciate your candor on the technical details and enjoyed the history lesson. Sighting the limitations of the platform that you mentioned, it makes it all the more impressive what you've been able to squeeze out of it.

I feel like this is a key time in saber sound history. It truly is the end of an era in high-end sound as we bid farewell to the CF as we know it and the dawn of a new age of 32-bit performance. It's like going from early 2000's flip phones to a modern smart phone in terms of potential.

It's also interesting to note that in a way, a circle closing here. Back when the open source saber movement started, the features and behavior were modeled heavily after Plecter (and NEC) examples. Then they started adding never-done-before features like NeoPixel blades(RaceManiac), SmoothSwing(Thexter), and supercharged processors (Profezzorn/Proffie). Now, we see those innovations (and more, judging from the OP) rolled back into Plecter. Round and round we go! What a ride!
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: slothfurnace on February 21, 2019, 10:15:51 AM
Thanks for the update, Erv!  Looking forward to great things from you!
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: K-2SO on February 21, 2019, 03:29:14 PM
Agreed. I can’t wait to see the final product.  :police:
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on February 22, 2019, 12:41:01 AM
thanks everyone !

Thanks for these insights. As a dev, I appreciate your candor on the technical details and enjoyed the history lesson. Sighting the limitations of the platform that you mentioned, it makes it all the more impressive what you've been able to squeeze out of it.

Thank you. Not that it's the most interesting part and people are rather interested about sabers or SW but still. I'm not the kind of person believing that it's all "granted" and that those things have been existing forever / readily available. I've been trained in electronics in a local club by a self taught engineer (and chemist & photograph) who literally witnessed tubes, then transistor (inc. shitty germanium), microprocessor and all. Looking back on your shoulder was then part of the training as well.
Funny enough, I even remember the first time I had that wow moment as a child : my mother telling me that those drawing pens (not colored pencils) I was letting open-dry sometimes, they were invented when I was born, in the 70's (factual invention in a bit earlier but that's when they started to be available for a decent price in the super markets, not just for mechanical engineers). Of course, when I was 5 and using those, I though that even cavemen had those.


Quote
I feel like this is a key time in saber sound history. It truly is the end of an era in high-end sound as we bid farewell to the CF as we know it and the dawn of a new age of 32-bit performance. It's like going from early 2000's flip phones to a modern smart phone in terms of potential.

Yes, a major step thanks to a real progress of embedded electronics / CPU power (not that it happened just yesterday, it's continuous). Surprisingly there's still live mockery about old-timers whatever the technology is, and this until it becomes "vintage" and collectors
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: jpbeck on February 22, 2019, 08:19:39 AM
I still have a couple of your boards from way back... like the 2nd generation I think. I have one I haven’t even taken out of the box yet.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Chadm on February 25, 2019, 04:41:54 PM
Thanks for the update Erv, I know putting out updates like this take a lot of time and effort away from your actual development work, but we appreciate it. Keep up the great work and thanks for everything you are doing. Can't wait to see the CFX.

Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Darth Brooks on March 19, 2019, 06:31:46 AM
Will CFX do string blades like he CF-LS or just neo?

Thanks erv
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on March 19, 2019, 09:31:30 AM
Will CFX do string blades like he CF-LS or just neo?

Thanks erv

ledstrips only, spatial effects make segmented string blades part of an old era now, even if the CF-LS had accu-bolt. True, fantastic brightness were obtained but I really see the ledstrip catching up on this plus the other benefits
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: JakeSoft on March 21, 2019, 06:54:34 PM
Will CFX do string blades like he CF-LS or just neo?

Thanks erv

ledstrips only, spatial effects make segmented string blades part of an old era now, even if the CF-LS had accu-bolt. True, fantastic brightness were obtained but I really see the ledstrip catching up on this plus the other benefits

Well, at least he didn't ask for EL blade support.  :cheesy:
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on March 22, 2019, 12:54:28 AM
 :azn:
well, technically, even the NB board is compatible with driving an EL driver and provides progressive power on, so that's a bit of backward compatibility !
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Darth Brooks on March 22, 2019, 12:14:34 PM
Will CFX do string blades like he CF-LS or just neo?

Thanks erv

ledstrips only, spatial effects make segmented string blades part of an old era now, even if the CF-LS had accu-bolt. True, fantastic brightness were obtained but I really see the ledstrip catching up on this plus the other benefits
well thanks for letting me know...

I don't suppose you've got a CF-LS hanging around you like to sell a guy?😁
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on April 07, 2019, 09:00:36 PM
Just a quick update, happy to say most of the audio aspect have been finalized and are under (heavy) tests. I reviewed the stock of SD cards I had (and new ones) and playing with the worse ones actually helped a lot optimizing the audio engine, so I get smoothswing + font (4 tracks total) working even on old 1GB FAT only, simple speed card.
I'm binding today the neopixels effects class and callbacks then adding the PLI back. I'd like to work a bit on the display to bring more details to it (like the blaster core OS stuff I did back in the day). The display already has a lot of automatic "skinning" that the user can play with, edit, configure and author.

The accent sequencer is getting a huge new look and will offer more possibilities thanks to the improved capabilities of the new (HW) platform. With that amount of headroom, it's possible to bring much more configurability to the accents, yet stick to a simple configuration syntax.
The accents configuration is now following the same structure as the main configuration file with sections and profiles. As a result, there's a unique file for all the sequences (idle, normal, lockup) and they are all variable in size (ie you only write the stages and delays you need). The RICE aspect of the accent sequencer will need to evolve as I'm not totally satisfied of the syntax and the way data is exchanged with the board. In interim, I'll probably come with a RICE section that will produce the sequencer file to save to the SD card. Then, once properly factored, I'll add the RICE commands. Of course, with a USB storage access to the board, the update could be just this but I keep considering the full remote control aspect of the board using bluetooth.
Speaking off, I've also added all the former (sometimes undocumented) commands I had implemented on CF (omnisabers) and CS. Those include booth/poser modes and basically replacing most of the user actions with a remote trigger.

All for today, wishing everyone who goes to Celebration in Chicago a fantastic blast !
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: EXAR KUN on April 08, 2019, 06:38:48 AM
Just a quick update, happy to say most of the audio aspect have been finalized and are under (heavy) tests. I reviewed the stock of SD cards I had (and new ones) and playing with the worse ones actually helped a lot optimizing the audio engine, so I get smoothswing + font (4 tracks total) working even on old 1GB FAT only, simple speed card.
I'm binding today the neopixels effects class and callbacks then adding the PLI back. I'd like to work a bit on the display to bring more details to it (like the blaster core OS stuff I did back in the day). The display already has a lot of automatic "skinning" that the user can play with, edit, configure and author.

The accent sequencer is getting a huge new look and will offer more possibilities thanks to the improved capabilities of the new (HW) platform. With that amount of headroom, it's possible to bring much more configurability to the accents, yet stick to a simple configuration syntax.
The accents configuration is now following the same structure as the main configuration file with sections and profiles. As a result, there's a unique file for all the sequences (idle, normal, lockup) and they are all variable in size (ie you only write the stages and delays you need). The RICE aspect of the accent sequencer will need to evolve as I'm not totally satisfied of the syntax and the way data is exchanged with the board. In interim, I'll probably come with a RICE section that will produce the sequencer file to save to the SD card. Then, once properly factored, I'll add the RICE commands. Of course, with a USB storage access to the board, the update could be just this but I keep considering the full remote control aspect of the board using bluetooth.
Speaking off, I've also added all the former (sometimes undocumented) commands I had implemented on CF (omnisabers) and CS. Those include booth/poser modes and basically replacing most of the user actions with a remote trigger.

All for today, wishing everyone who goes to Celebration in Chicago a fantastic blast !

^^ Never before has so much been said in just two paragraphs!
Very exciting news. Particularly cool is the news about the SD card and the display options are intriguing
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Yaraell_Ren on April 08, 2019, 06:42:46 AM
Thanks for the update Erv! I can't wait to see your smoothswing in action :)
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: yodadawa on April 08, 2019, 07:35:32 AM
Thanks for the update.

For the sequencer it would be nice to address up to 10 LED bargraph.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Excelsior on April 08, 2019, 09:51:23 PM
Can't wait to see this happen, Erv. I'm sure it will be top quality. Looking forward to experiencing your version of smoothswing.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on April 11, 2019, 03:14:01 AM
Currently adding back the ledstrip fx engine, the blade driver is still going under (long) testing like overnight to see if it plays fair with the audio playback.
I'm also removing the very few "locks" of the old code that fixed the max number of fonts, therefore moving to "as any as you want" (understand how much the SD card can hold, and how long are you happy to wait at boot time).
Overall the dynamic scan during the boot is really fast, 100ms to load and parse 16 fonts (what I have on my package ATM) with debug logging disabled (the board only outputs the strict minimum info, how many fonts were found, low level basic diag etc. With the extensive debug turned on and 1138 pages of data logged, you reach 370ms of parsing time. The display doesn't add any notable latency to the boot, maybe a small variance of 1ms, so I'm really happy with it.

For the sake of the details / testing, I created a package with 64 fonts and it takes 320 ms to load & scan.

Also, some of the default package fonts are already being converted to smoothswing.

I'm working on the accent sequencer today, bringing the new format to factual C++ classes. Regarding the question above, there will be an extension of the accents, indeed.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: JakeSoft on April 11, 2019, 04:28:21 AM
I am curious: Since the CFX platform will completely out-class any existing PL products (and can presumably scale to the needs of the user with only software tweaks and settings) what happens to all of the legacy PL products after CFX is released? Also, are you going with the roman numerals from now on (CFX vs. CF10)?
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on April 11, 2019, 07:43:31 AM
good points ! I think I'll send a remote FW push via snail mail that will automatically migrate all the (older) boards to the new OS. They will have all the features but will become dramatically slow by a factor x50 and people will have to buy the new stuff...
Wait, someone else does that already ! :evil: :cry:

The board lineup will evolve indeed. The CFX will have a "little brother-sister" companion board with simpler / smaller in mind. Most of it is already designed on paper but that won't get prototyped until the new core is finalized. There's no reason most of the "good stuff" of CFx doesn't go to the entry level as well, though the notion of entry level vs high end or various "tiers" makes less and less sense nowadays. I'd rather say there will be an "expert" board and a more "beginner" board but I'd like them to be mostly a variant in size / footprint rather than in absolute feature set.

No idea about the numbering. CF-X started as a code name and I like it but I'm too focused on coding to think about the numbering of the next gen !
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: JakeSoft on April 11, 2019, 08:56:49 AM
good points ! I think I'll send a remote FW push via snail mail that will automatically migrate all the (older) boards to the new OS. They will have all the features but will become dramatically slow by a factor x50 and people will have to buy the new stuff...
Wait, someone else does that already ! :evil: :cry:

HAHA! Yeah, who would do that?  :rolleyes:

The board lineup will evolve indeed. The CFX will have a "little brother-sister" companion board with simpler / smaller in mind. Most of it is already designed on paper but that won't get prototyped until the new core is finalized. There's no reason most of the "good stuff" of CFx doesn't go to the entry level as well, though the notion of entry level vs high end or various "tiers" makes less and less sense nowadays. I'd rather say there will be an "expert" board and a more "beginner" board but I'd like them to be mostly a variant in size / footprint rather than in absolute feature set.

It was both interesting and kind of funny for me to read this because parts of it sound like you're quoting one of my recent YouTube videos where I speculate on the future of saber sound. I can't tell if you watched it were being cheeky or not. Regardless, thanks for the info. Good fortune on the rest of your development tasks!
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on April 11, 2019, 10:47:21 AM
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.

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).

Still, I think the common misconception remains between mainstream = easy = cheap (or replace = with => or "leads to") but I suppose perception is reality like the saying states. What I mean is that only considering those plan aspects is a huge reduction of what is behind.

I responded in the video you posted but to confirm here : yes the board will be backward compatible with the existing fonts. They are playing in "monophonic" mode when just alone and automatically move to smoothswing support if you add the pairs, so you don't need to have necessarily unmixed type of fonts (or "polyphonic") to get a smoothswing effect : the board is by nature polyphonic.
As I probably mentioned before I'll bring the polyphonic font support(ie unmixed fonts) later with a FW upgrade, I'm currently just trying to release a proper v1.0 with legacy features + some new stuff.

I like the overall trend. I'm happy to see that we can now work rather on the scenario than exclusively on boring low level aspects (I mean, you need to do it at some point anyways), it brings more satisfaction as a prop builder. And I can't wait to come back to building, not that dislike coding but my first love which took me to the hobby in 2005 was *building* and making.

Like my Tron disc from 2015, which is ledstrip by the way, with localized effect.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Darth Brooks on April 11, 2019, 10:54:10 AM
Thanks for posting erv! I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we really appreciate the uodates...

I for can hardly wait to implement this board into my collection!
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: JakeSoft 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.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: jons3657 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?
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv 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.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: jons3657 on April 22, 2019, 03:13:20 PM
So... is that a yes? lol
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: JakeSoft 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.

Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: jons3657 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.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Yaraell_Ren 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.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: K-2SO on April 23, 2019, 01:10:01 PM
This thread is meant to be for sharing of “news”, not for extensive “debate”.  :police:
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv 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.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: JakeSoft 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.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: jons3657 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.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Sabermach TB on April 26, 2019, 06:46:39 PM
Will CFX  be released in 2019?
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv 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 ! :-)
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv 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 !)
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Kreyhn 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.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: TheSilverDark on May 20, 2019, 10:49:00 PM
I'm so excited for this board...Now I just gotta restrain myself from finalizing my saber until this bad boy comes out so I can accommodate for size and any added features I decide to throw in!
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Justintmars on May 23, 2019, 08:57:29 AM
GREAT NEWS! Hope to see it soon   :grin:

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 !)
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: ShtokyD on May 24, 2019, 05:42:46 AM
Oh, now that's a lot of new RICE commands to add to the smartphone "ForceSync" app!
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on May 25, 2019, 04:30:33 AM
Adding back Tangible Font selection today. It's a CF8-9 legacy feature but I'm extending it for CFx with additional user interface / interaction scenario.
The UI folder is actually growing up a lot. The default package is now 330+ MB with 1200+ files and counting, and that's without the story telling system.

Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: JakeSoft on May 27, 2019, 05:00:17 PM
Adding back Tangible Font selection today. It's a CF8-9 legacy feature but I'm extending it for CFx with additional user interface / interaction scenario.
The UI folder is actually growing up a lot. The default package is now 330+ MB with 1200+ files and counting, and that's without the story telling system.

Erv: "Solderless breadboard? Heck no! I'm building this test rig like a pro!" *pulls soldering iron from holster* :cheesy:
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on May 27, 2019, 09:42:44 PM
LOL ! Indeed, the soldering iron is never far away ! I do use solderless breadboards too but this test rig is traveling a lot between my personal lab and my work place, so I need it to be reliable.

Code wise, Spectrum layer one is coded, it needs an improved color selection, I'm doing this today. I've added a few other parameters as well and some visual scenarios to the Tangible Font Selection / blade detection.

What's left do to do at the present day are mostly the accu bolt system and the combo system. Those are mostly code to bring back / copy+paste, so it's nothing "complicated".
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: jbkuma on May 27, 2019, 11:03:32 PM
it's nothing "complicated".
Famous last words!
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Master Timbo on May 28, 2019, 10:30:37 AM
...and that's without the story telling system.
Story telling system? Tell me more  :wink:
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on May 28, 2019, 12:10:02 PM
...and that's without the story telling system.
Story telling system? Tell me more  :wink:

Once upon a time, there was very few sound boards... then out of the bushes... :cheesy:
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: EXAR KUN on May 28, 2019, 01:37:14 PM
Mmmmm very cool... lots of accent LEDs
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Clinton445 on May 29, 2019, 09:27:30 AM
When will this beautiful beast be ready??
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Lord Veltor on June 04, 2019, 02:26:47 PM
Very much looking forward to this new board! Erv, you have raised the bar once again.

I have one question though, For chassis compatibility, will the CF9 and CFX be the same size?
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Mister Bones on June 05, 2019, 02:28:58 PM
Very much looking forward to this new board! Erv, you have raised the bar once again.

I have one question though, For chassis compatibility, will the CF9 and CFX be the same size?

Going by the photo on FB, the CFX is going to be considerably smaller than the 9. (CFX In the middle)

(https://i.ibb.co/CvCZJ5b/BC2-D4-F4-A-4717-4-E17-B49-E-9-A5-F9967300-F.jpg) (https://ibb.co/CvCZJ5b)
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on June 09, 2019, 08:29:21 PM
The CFx is 34.30 x 20.75mm.

Good progress on the code this week (and it keeps going). The tangible font system was re installed and extended to 16 slots. I also added a configuration option to let the CFX decide if a retraction is initiated automatically on blade removal (if the saber was ON already).
Now I'm RICE parameter saving, it's just tedious to do (ie not forgetting any param to be saved and exported) woke up at 5AM on a dayoff will take care of this !
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on June 18, 2019, 12:29:15 AM
RICE import export of parameters, along with file saving is getting pretty completed now. My demo saber got a huge push yesterday (back to the lathe, yay). I'll soon publish a feature list vs short term development road map of what will be released right after the boards themselves.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Link on June 18, 2019, 01:50:17 PM
Very exciting!
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on June 21, 2019, 07:15:19 AM
My demo saber is (finally) progressing, I'm now just missing some machining on the control box and I have to do a pair of short blade as those are easier show and swing on video obviously).
I'll be done today with the coding of the whole file saving system (config, prefs etc). Still modding a bit the SD package structure with 2 other easter eggs.
Bolt code should be back in the structure this afternoon, then more ledstrip work during the WE as I need accu bolt enabled to finalize the ledstrip renderer. It already works and produces a blade with everything minus the special effects that are post layered along with the bolt.

Like lego bricks... a lot of fun as long as you don't step on them with bare feet :-D
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Darth Brooks on June 21, 2019, 07:28:05 AM
Well I couldn't happier to hear it's coming along!

I'm waiting on a couple of pretty awesome pieces that will have CFX!

Thanks for the update erv very excited to see this in action
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on June 24, 2019, 07:04:22 AM
ran cloc (count line of code) tool and CFX (saber app + core structure) is about 60k line of code (comments / blanks not included). #yikes

also, I'm (finally) refactoring the code of Omnisabers 2 to prepare some demos, as I have room in my saber to install the new dongle.

[addon] bolt structure and main code is in place again and working, couple of gremlins to fight today, but mostly finished. Now to get that displayed by the blade renderer
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Sabermach TB on June 24, 2019, 07:18:17 AM
Can’t wait for it to be released!
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: EXAR KUN on June 24, 2019, 07:27:48 AM
ran cloc (count line of code) tool and CFX (saber app + core structure) is about 60k line of code (comments / blanks not included). #yikes

also, I'm (finally) refactoring the code of Omnisabers 2 to prepare some demos, as I have room in my saber to install the new dongle.

[addon] bolt structure and main code is in place again and working, couple of gremlins to fight today, but mostly finished. Now to get that displayed by the blade renderer

I thought you take it easy in the summer! Sounds like a lot of work :) The results will be a lot of fun though for sure
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on June 30, 2019, 01:25:14 AM
I've shot some videos, currently editing them, writing a spec sheet and a road map. Busy WE !
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: RogueJedi21 on August 29, 2019, 03:16:28 PM
Any idea when the CFX's are gonna ship?
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: K-2SO on August 29, 2019, 04:49:33 PM
Any idea when the CFX's are gonna ship?

If you’re here int he U.S., TCSS has already been shipping them. I know Europe has been shipping as well.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: Darth Brooks on August 29, 2019, 05:59:21 PM
I got both of mine today! I'm not an installer so can't demo anything yet but sooooo excited!

Not gonna waste much time getting them installed though I can tell you that😉
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: pwrmac7600 on October 20, 2019, 12:36:30 PM
I've shot some videos, currently editing them, writing a spec sheet and a road map. Busy WE !

Any upcoming plans to add new Blade FX to CFX?
Got my Graflex in this week with a fresh CFX install, but finding the blade fx a little limited at the moment.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on October 20, 2019, 09:16:33 PM
Yes, i have place holder hooks for them, i just have too much on my plate right now but that's in the work
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: pwrmac7600 on October 21, 2019, 02:52:40 AM
Yes, i have place holder hooks for them, i just have too much on my plate right now but that's in the work

Question on blaster bolts, I have a huge delay from when the sound plays to when I see the effect on the blade. how do I tighten this up?
I read the accubolt and multibolt section of the manual, but I don't see where to change those settings.
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: erv on October 21, 2019, 03:14:32 AM
that's indeed the accubolt / multibolts timeline, those are in the font config (since it's font based / font specific)
Title: Re: Crystal Focus X and some news from the Plecter house
Post by: pwrmac7600 on October 21, 2019, 03:54:53 PM
that's indeed the accubolt / multibolts timeline, those are in the font config (since it's font based / font specific)

Worked perfectly, set it to zero and it was instant! Thank you!