Petit Crouton™ PRIZM v3.5 Single Cell Middle
Contents
1. 3 The numerous parameters of the main PC configuration file config txt have been split in 4 tabs organized by themes as much as possible to ease the configuration process If you need any help to remember how R I C E works click on the Folder Tools icon on the lower right side of the program it will open the help section To establish the communication with the saber turn the blade on then select the serial port Make sure to always click the serial port in the drop down list even if the correct one appears as selected Sound Board Link Status Autoscan Connect port COM18 S e refresh It s advised to use a single serial port at a time Sometimes you ll have your Bluetooth serial port enabled at the same time and appearing in the port selection menu make sure you identify the serial COM port corresponding to your R I C E cable If you have a doubt go to the System control panel and open the Peripherals list Plugging unplugging your cable will show up in the list You can change the port by right clicking on the COM peripheral and going in the advanced properties I tend to renumber all my data cable as COM2 but I use only one at once Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 38 If you plugged your cable2. 20 speed of the energy variation flickering effect of the blade A high value produces a damaged saber effect while a small value generates subtile energy changes The value 0 disables the effect static blade flkd 0 100 depth in of the energy fluctuation effect i e the the range over which the LED brightness will be affected during the effect A low value does not modify the energy very much while a high value digs big steps of light intensity To be used with the parameter flkrs fade 0 3000 color profile transition time Must be lower than the Force sound duration Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or 22 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners The Override configuration File The override txt file present in the root directory of the SD card contains parameters that will override any settings present in the configuration files of each bank It also contains settings that should really be global for the saber and not specific to each bank such as the motion detection settings and switch type This comes very handy to define a global setting for the blade flicker or other aspects of the saber which once decided don t have to be copied and pasted in all banks The bank configuration will be always parsed in first place then settings present in the override f
3. The Voltage across the resistor is simply the difference between the supply voltage the cell voltage and the LED voltage also called forward voltage or Vf R Vsupply Vled MaxLedCurrent The LED voltage is often mentioned in the datasheet or in the product page The LED current is chosen by the user depending on the battery solution and the LED ratings For instance even if a LED can take up to 1 5A a regular 14500 cell will not be able to deliver such a current due to its limited maximum discharge current A 18650 cell will be able to deliver such a current Let s take for instance a red LED with a 2 9V forward voltage driven at 1 5A with a 18650 cell 3 7V R 3 7 2 9 1 5 0 53 ohm the closest resistor might be 0 56 ohm Wattage calculation The Ohm s Law gives us P U I with again U being the voltage across the resistor and I the current in the circuit and we now know both of them Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 16 P Vsupply Vled LedCurrent In the previous example P 3 7 2 9 1 5 1 2 W Ideally a 1 5 to 2 W resistor is recommended in this case Resistor bargain As seen in the example above a 0 56 ohm resistor might not be easy to find Also the user should not focus on the absolut
4. activation set switch to 2 offp 0 1 Anti power off protection A POP To avoid accidentally powering off the saber especially when using a momentary button for activation we added a power off protection When this parameter is set to 1 the user must press the activation button and confirm with the auxiliary button It is not necessary to press both buttons at the same time keep the activation switch pressed first then press the auxiliary switch the blade goes off offd 0 65535 Anti power off delay An alternative to A POP defining how long the user must press the activation switch before the blade goes off A value of 65535 corresponds to 2min12 which is useful if you just upgraded an ultrasound saber with a PC and you re feeling some power off scheme nostalgia Values from 70 to 200 140 to 400 ms are relevant and very efficient for u aag the saber won t be turned off accidentally BEERS qon 0 3000 quick on Allows having the blade ignited in a specific amount of time rather than matching the duration of the power on sound and should not exceed the duration of any power on sounds Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or 21 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners qoff 0 3000 same thing as above but for the blade retraction valsnd 0 1 enables
5. is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Placement amp Installation Ideally the module is placed in the hilt so that the motion sensor is at 1 or more from the spinning center of the hilt the SD card remains easily accessible Usually the pommel area is a good choice however hilts made of 2 halves can have the board installed in the top side of the saber Securing the board can be done using double sided foam tape or a velcro strap Hilt Foam Tape P USD Card Motion sensor Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Tools and Parts required to install operate the module an ESD safe soldering station amp soldering wire 60 40 1mm OD or eq pliers flat and cutting a Digital Multimeter DMM strongly advised so useful alatching or momentary switch for the blade ignition and a momentary switch for the auxiliary switch wire amp heat shrink rechargeable Batteries recharge port canon 2 1mm socket appropriate Battery charger a USB SD card reader accepting micro SD card or a regular SD card reader with a micro to
6. more verbose during the boot process and will send out some useful debugging information To see the boot process log press Ctri M or Apple M on MacOS to open the Max Window of the R I C E program Before powering the saber ie removing the kill key make sure the data cable is inserted in the saber data port and in the USB port on the computer side then select the right COM port in R I C E Finally remove the kill key to power the saber and look at the log of information printed in the Max window Color Setup amp Color Mixing Override LED Fade Time Max Profile Current Profile Main Blade Color Drive Drive2 Drive3 Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 40 A few special features have been incorporated to R I C E to ease the color selection process Rough color setup With Prizm the blade and FoC color are defined in profiles We therefore set a single color setting tab with the selection of the color profile being edited While it is possible to change on the fly the amount of profiles used on the saber the best practice is to first set as many profiles as you want to use manually in the configuration file with a default drive on channel 1 like the following color0 800 0 0 fcolor0 800 400 0 From there yo
7. regular SD card adapter a computer a digital audio editor software handling WAV files if you wish to create your own sound fonts How does it work The two main effects of the saber is the production of a sound when the blade is cutting the air swing producing a sort of Doppler effect and the impact between two blades clash The motion sensor we use is capable of detecting rotation movement and shocks The main difficulty is to make the proper difference between the two classes of movements The sensor is digitized by a microcontroller then analyzed in real time and compared to a modelization of clash and swing gestures using low latency DSP techniques now down to 10 ms The algorithm has many trimming parameters in order to be adjusted to the fighting style of each user or fighter and also to each saber hilt design As a matter of fact each saber is unique and various interaction scenarios can be desired A setup allows then to change the sensitivity to the swing and the clash depending if the user wants a really verbose saber or casual sound FX Along the different versions we improved our gesture recognition algorithms which now have semi automated parameterization the user selecting only basic thresholds and the general sensitivity Moreover default settings usually suit most users The swing gesture is a rotation of the blade leading it to cut the air at an average speed The clash gesture is a sudden shock of the blade
8. respective owners Drive adjustments On direct drive boards no current control is provided to the LED The maximum current to a die is limited by an external resistor From there the board acts as a color mixer between zero and that maximum current to realize the desired blade or FoC color Those channel drive values are set in the color profiles There are always special cases and exceptions One is to end with a resistor value calculation that gives an extremely small value lt 0 5 ohm You can always wire several resistor in parallel to reach the right value but sometimes it s simpler to just limit what the maximum drive will be on a particular channel so that the current doesn t become excessive on that die The drive values present in the color and fcolor parameter defines the max drive that is applied to the high power LED to obtain a certain color Set to its max 1023 and using no resistor on the die it will apply the battery voltage Let s take a green LED that has a forward voltage of 3 45V 1A It is really close to the battery voltage The resistor calculation remains the same R Vcell Vled LedCurrent R 3 7 3 45 1 0 15 ohm On the one hand such a small resistor is unpractical to source and tolerance will not lead to an accurate current limitation On the other hand not using a resistor will overdrive the LED which might fry or in practical conditions it will create a current spike overloading the ba
9. save the file on the SD card Once the configuration is over simply remove the card from the reader after having it ejected right click on the reader device in windows explorer contextual menu eject Put the card back in the saber and test you new setup Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 18 Parameters and fine tuning the saber The configuration file includes a set of parameters dedicated to the sound section of the controller and the gestural motion detection both being linked A second set of parameters handles the behavior of the high power LED Some parameters influence both categories since visual and sound effects are in tight relationship intrinsically All parameters are lowercase Motion amp Gesture detection parameters Motion recognition is processed using complex low latency DSP algorithms however most of the parameters used for those are internally computed so the user only has to setup a few thresholds amp sensitivity level as high level parameters The overall sensitivity of the board is controlled by the i parameter If you want a more verbose saber while you re satisfied of the swing clash discrimination just increase a little bit that parameter turning it to 55 instead of the defa
10. ED technology allows a realistic ignition retraction effect of the blade while keeping it almost empty and therefore not fragile when hit An additional feature of the luxeon driving section is the configurable generation of a flickering effect of the blade brightness It s a random alteration of the light produced by the high power LED suggesting energy variations for a more realistic result which is pretty close to the sabers seen in the movies The effect is not a constant pulse but is more like a candle effect The Plecter Labs direct drive 3 channels section of the Petit Crouton PRIZM Board can drive up to 2A and works with any high power LED featuring a forward voltage Vf lower or equal to 3 8V Luxeon Rebel Seoul Prolight and Ledengin branded Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners LEDs have been tested successfully Please note that as we re writing this manual we cannot guarantee the use with ANY kind of high power LEDs appearing in the market in the future To avoid injuries and retina damage due to the high brightness of those high power LEDs simple emitter plugs can be built using a piece of blade tubing ended with some decorative greeblies Sound section The Plecter Labs sound board is unique It ha
11. N 16 WATTAGE CALCULATION 16 RESISTOR BARGAIN 17 MAIN CONFIGURATION FILE 18 PARAMETERS AND FINE TUNING THE SABER 19 THE OVERRIDE CONFIGURATION FILE 23 USER S NOTES 23 COLOR PROFILES 24 Profiles definition 24 Profiles browsing 24 DRIVE ADJUSTMENTS 25 RESONANT CHAMBER 26 BROWSING THE SOUND BANKS REBOOTING THE SABER 26 CREATING YOUR OWN SOUNDS 26 INSTALLING A SOUND FONT ON THE SD CARD 27 ADVANCED WIRING amp USAGE 28 Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners WIRING A GENERAL POWER ON INDICATOR ACCENT LED ADD A CRYSTAL CHAMBER TO YOUR SABER FLASH ON CLASH MIXING TECHNIQUES ACCENT LEDS SEQUENCER Stages amp Delays DEEP SLEEP FLASHING LED FORCE PUSH EFFECT MUTE ON THE GO USER S NOTES USING R LC E REAL TIME INTERNAL CONFIGURATION EDITOR 28 28 30 32 34 35 36 36 37 GETTING STARTED WITH R I C E READING THE CURRENT SETTINGS CHANGING SETTINGS DISCARDING SETTINGS SAVING THE SETTINGS USING R I C E AS A DEBUG TOOL COLOR SETUP amp COLOR MIXING Rough color setup Color fine tuning USER S NOTES TROUBLESHOOTING amp FAQ Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trad
12. Petit Crouton PRIZM v3 5 Single Cell Middle Range Illuminated Saber Controller User s manual Erv Plecter Labs Edition 1 0 November 2014 erv plecterlabs com http www plecterlabs com Important release information 3 channel direct drive Color mixing with the FlexiBlend engine Supports luxeon III V rebel old or new seoul LEDs Ledengin tri rebels tri Cree etc Modification copies or distribution of that document is strictly prohibited Plecter Labs Erv Plecter 2005 2014 Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Index PETIT CROUTON PRIZM V3 5 1 IMPORTANT RELEASE INFORMATION 1 INTRODUCTION 4 High Power LEDs aka Luxeon 4 Sound section 5 Petit Crouton PRIZM V3 5 Features amp Maximum Ratings 6 Placement amp Installation 7 TOOLS AND PARTS REQUIRED TO INSTALL OPERATE THE MODULE 8 HOW DOES IT WORK 8 SD CARD CONTENTS SOUND BANKS AND SLOTS 9 BOARD OVERVIEW 10 USER S NOTES 10 GETTING STARTED WITH PETIT CROUTON 11 WIRING AND OPERATING THE MODULE 11 General Power Switch amp Recharge Port 11 General wiring 13 USER S NOTES 13 Animated Accent LEDs 14 Calculating resistors for LEDs 14 High power LED wiring 15 HIGH POWER LED RESISTOR CALCULATIONS 16 STUNT UPGRADE 16 RESISTOR CALCULATIO
13. ace on the SD card To simplify the update process put the new sounds on the SD overwrite the old ones Then select the whole contents of the SD card and copy it in a temporary directory folder on the hard disk Format then the card and next copy the files back to the SD card in one run Q what s the meaning of the beeps when the module starts A it means that a file is missing or hasn t been found It can be the boot sound or the configuration files Three beeps generally mean that many important files haven t been found You can get more details about what s happening by hooking up your RICE cable connect and press ctrl M apple key M on mac to display the debug window and see the boot log of your board Add debug 1 at the beginning of your configuration file for additional information Q when I power up the saber I get 3 beeps I havent updated the card A You might have a corrupted preference file prefs txt Get the default one from the default package Q can I rename the sub folders on the SD card A no the module expects a certain organization of the file system on the card so that it can find the sounds Q I don t have the aux Button wired can I rename the sub folders to swap them A no because it will modify the SD card file structure Wire an auxiliary button to access the different sound banks Q I wired a rumbling motor in my hilt and now I have swings triggered while the hilt rests on a fla
14. after launching the RICE program and your port doesn t appear in the drop down PORT menu click the autoscan button first it will update the list of available ports Note if by mistake you unplug your cable while the R I C E program is open click autoconnect a couple of times to ensure the COM port list is updated again once it s plugged back into the USB port of the computer With the saber on and the COM port selected click connect The saber should answer echo and the green light will turn on From there you re saber is ready to receive real time configuration changes Reading the current settings Just click on the Read Cfg button and all the parameters of the different tabs will refresh with the current settings of the saber for the currently loaded sound bank which number appears on the right side of the app Changing settings The key point with R I C E is that the data cable doesn t need to stay connected all the time to the saber once you ve altered a parameter and you want to test it in an actual condition For example the motion sensitivity parameters have to be tested by waving the hilt It s not a problem at all R I C E supports to have data cable hot unplugged and the blade led can even be turned off and turned on again for testing parameters like quick on and quick off durations Then finally the cable can be hot plugged again to proceed to the saving operation Discarding settings Not sure of what y
15. al Light and Magic Disney or 13 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Animated Accent LEDs There are many ways to pimp your saber hilt using additional small LEDs further referred in this document as Accent LEDs Petit Crouton features a 32 stage sequencer that allows the user to setup a blinking animated sequence for up to 7 LEDs The board outputs 3 3V 18mA max per accent LED pad User must ensure the used accent LEDs have a forward voltage Vf lower or equal to 3 3V Accent LEDs Resistor Footprints Accent LEDs PADs Accent LEDs Ground Return As a Space saver PC embeds the footprints for SMT resistors The footprint is made for 0603 resistors To install those resistors on the board pre tin one pad only then grab the resistor with a pair of sharp tweezers slide it against the pre tinned pad heat up the joint wait for it to cool down then solder the other side of the resistor If the user prefers to use classic resistor with leads the SMT footprint must be bridged tin both pads first then add a bit of solder while the soldering iron tip is right in the middle of the pads Some stripped wrapping wire can also be used to achieve the bridged connection On the picture above the red arrows point to the positive pads of the accent leds use small gauge wire to send those signals to the positive of the LEDs Flat Ribbon cable can be very handy f
16. anges but the third die is also added on top Let s take this time the example of a blue blade that would become cyanish during FoC plus the white die on top in order to both affect the color and overall increase the blade brightness The first 2 color channels remain mixed during the Flash on Clash effect for the whole duration of the shimmer while the white die is applied on top during its own specific duration focd color 1000 200 0 fcolor 1000 500 700 focmix 011 Whether you plan just a color change or see the FoC as another die lighting up the user must consider the amount of current available from the battery pack A color change might actually consume a lot more current than the normal blade like moving from a red blade to a white FoC To match the battery pack capabilities the overall current of the different die could need to be lowered to obtain the right color but with less brightness Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 31 Accent LEDs sequencer Four LEDs can produce 16 different patterns for the sake of editing the sequence we limited the sequencer to 32 stages The working principle of the sequencer is to put the LEDs in a given pattern state during a certain time delay Once the delay is over a new pattern is o
17. blade lockup blaster and further clash and swing effects are disabled until the button is released Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 35 Mute On The Go Proposed and requested by Novastar for the specific situation of teaching saber classes and interacting with students We all enjoy our saber to be loud when playing with it however it s hard to show saber moves and interact with the students with the saber sound in the background If was already possible to mute the saber in the previous versions by using a dedicated bank in which mute was enabled however it was not very convenient to go back and forth between banks just to show a few saber moves in a quiet way We therefore tweaked the firmware so that pressing the aux switch prior pressing the activator switch will mute the saber until powering the blade off the power off sound will be played Further regular ignition without pressing the aux switch prior ignition will have the normal sound volume as setup in the configuration file of the selected sound bank User s Notes Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or 36 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are th
18. casfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or 27 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Advanced Wiring amp Usage Wiring a general Power On Indicator Accent LED It s is sometimes useful or good looking to have a LED lighting up as soon as the kill key is removed Of course 1 of the 7 accent LEDs could still blink as idle mode indicator but a permanently on LED could be nice to simply indicate the battery pack is working properly This is also very nice to have indicator lighting up the internal ring of a chromed anti vandal switch The PC board provides a regulated 3 3V pad for that purpose shown in purple in the illustration below Add a crystal chamber to your saber A crystal chamber is a nice detail to add to your saber The crystal can be lit up by a multicolor LED which can mirror the blade behavior for more realism This way the crystal chamber color is affected by the Flash on Clash color or simply by the main blade flicker Whether you use or not the color extender board FlexiBlend driving signals PWM can be extracted to power the crystal chamber LED Ideally you ll need to use an LED that matches your high power LED setup For instance if you are using a RGB tri rebel the best choice is obviously a RGB accent LEDs You will need a common cathode type of LED those are fairly common on ebay and in many electronic parts outlets Like
19. ctiver la compression configuration 2 Unzip the sound font archive in a directory of your hard disc 3 Take all the WAV sounds If the sound font zip archive comes configuration files that are cea supposed to match the theme of the sound font you can take it as well but make sure the settings wont harm anything especially the high power LED current 4 Copy the files in desired sound bank and overwrite the files 5 Copy the whole SD card Ctrl a Ctrl c to a temporary folder of the hard drive 6 Format the SD card in FAT FAT16 or FAT32 7 Select the whole content of the temporary directory on the hard drive and copy it in one run to the SD card Ctrl a Ctrl c Ctrl v on the SD drive If you wish to try different sound fonts quickly copying back and forth all the files will soon be boring and time consuming Start by configuring your board to use bank1 with a working SD card Use the vocal menu to select that bank Then on the hard drive make a temporary file structure of the SD card that has only the bank1 directory and nothing else Use that directory to test the different sound fonts This way you will transfer only a limited number of files Once the fonts have been selected you can store them in the different sound banks and start adjusting the parameters which you can now do in real time with R I C E see further in this document Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lu
20. de power saving For that purpose 2 parameters have been added to the configuration file config txt idleled 0 3 selection of the LED used as idle indicator matches LED number one 3 indicates accent LED pad four Since there is a specific config txt file in each sound bank folder the idle LED can be different in each sound font and why not matching the bank number Hence just by looking to the flashing LED the user can remember which bank is currently selected in the saber idlepulsing 0 40 duration of the the idle flash of the selected LED In multiple of 1 40 of second O disable the effect With 1 we get a really short flash With 28 30 the idle LED stays on all the time except during a brief moment and with 40 the idle LED remains always on Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or 34 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Force push effect One of the great improvements since version 2 is the Force Push sound effect In our favorite movies the characters have the ability to push an opponent using telekinesis This effect is by definition silent however in the video games for instance an audio effect is added to provide the appropriate feedback to the player or to the audience The Force Push gesture is usually done by the hand which is not ho
21. e exclusive property of their respective owners Using R I C E Real time Internal Configuration Editor R I C E is a computer program allowing the user to remotely control change and save the configuration of the current sound bank without disassembling the saber using a data cable like the one sold at TCSS R I C E is now available on PC windows XP Vista and Seven and on MacOS R I C E is very easy to use The program is available for MacOS and Windows computers With Windows 7 the TCSS cable will be recognized automatically without the need of installing drivers The data cable is a USB serial port You can source your own there are mostly 3 different chipsets on the market FTDI the Prolific PL2303 and the Silicon Labs Silabs CP2102 The R I C E data connection to the sound board just requires 3 wires Rx Tx and the ground Make sure you use a RICE cable or USB serial port that is 3 3V compliant Getting started with R I C E The R I C E pads are under the sound board and are labeled To connect the data cable we recommend using a 3 5 mm stereo female jack with the following wiring Ring TXD Tip RXD Sleeve GND While it s possible to wire the sleeve GND wire to the GND pad of the board we recommend to connect it to the battery pack negative and not to the board negative to avoid a kill key recharge port bypass in the case a metal female jack is used Prefer a female jack with a plastic housing To bat
22. e precision of the resistor value if he is still within the LED specifications and ratings Instead of looking for an expensive source of a rare resistor the user can craft his own using 2 or more resistors Without going too much into boring details there s a simple rule of the thumb saying that wiring 2 identical resistors in parallel divides the resistor value by 2 and multiplies the wattage by 2 In our previous example a 2W 0 5 ohm ish resistor could be obtained with 2 x 1 W 1 ohm resistor Use either ceramic or thick carbon film resistors only as your high power LED resistor NO metal film When combining them in parallel ceramic resistors can be Pe directly wired directly In the case of carbon film resistor I recommend 2x1W1Q individually wrapping them in heat 0 5 Q 2W shrinking tube to avoid shorts if their paint chips which sometimes happens if they are touching each others If the resistor calculation ends up providing either a very small resistor value or a negative value you might skip the use of a resistor and adjust the LED drive instead Refer to the color profile section for more details Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or 17 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Main Configuration File The config txt configuration stored in each bank
23. eal time Internal Configuration Editor Crystal Pulse Crystal Focus and Crystal Focus Saber Core Petit Crouton Nano Biscotte Power On Angular Selection SD config Force Clash Force Swing Buttered Toast S S B T Secret Society of the Buttered Toast Power Extender Power Xtender Saber Audio Player SAP aka iSaber AccuBolt FlexiBlend The use of Plecter Labs trademarked terms is prohibited for use in advertisement or sales of a product not made by Plecter Labs or for a product not containing a Plecter Labs electronic device Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 45
24. emarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 37 39 39 39 39 40 40 4 41 42 43 Introduction This Saber Controller is the union of our evolutive saber sound module and our luxeon driver board we designed back in 2005 Driven by a single processor this module features a perfect synchronization between light and sound effects with the possibility to setup each effect with parameters stored on our SD Config technology The Petit Crouton is the little brother of our high end saber controller Crystal Focus CF The PC version 3 is mostly based on CF v6 5 and features 16 bit sound playback WAV format support 3 different sound banks blaster blocking force push effect and more If you re not familiar with ESD please visit http en wikipedia org wiki Electrostatic discharge Plecter Labs can not be held responsible for improper use or assembly of the Petit Crouton board High Power LEDs aka Luxeon DIY illuminated sabers have suffered for too long of the lack of a terrific and impressive blade retraction ignition effect EL wire technology did not allow this effect since it fades in and out in a homogeneous way all along its length because of the phosphor composing the wire coating MR Hasbro Fx sabers found a workaround by using a 64 LED strip on a flexible PCB which makes the retraction effect by switching the LEDs by group of 8 but this setup remains very fragile The high power L
25. er is engaged If the clash flow limiter has expired and even if the clash sound is still playing a swing sound can interrupt it swing 0 500 swing rate flow limiter Delay during which swings cannot be furthermore triggered clash 0 500 clash rate flow limiter Delay during which clashes cannot be furthermore triggered Sound parameters vol 0 4 digital volume setup 0 mutes the sound output 4 is the maximum volume beep 0 127 Sets the volume of the beeps emitted by the unit during reboot shmrd 10 500 duration of the shimmering effect of the high power LED during a clash Make sure this duration is not too much longer than the associated sound to keep a nice result Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 20 shmrp 5 25 periodicity of the light bursts during the clash effect A slow period will produce tight bursts shmrr 0 25 random value applied to the periodicity of the light burst during a clash effect Allows having bursts that are not regularly spaced in time which increases the realism For instance a period shmrp of 20 and a random value shmrr of 10 will produce a period between two bursts varying between 20 and 30 ie 40 and 60 ms shmr 0 100 0 100 shimmer effect depth Def
26. es sure the Petit Crouton Saber Core started properly and it gives a special identity to the saber and to the loaded sound font This sound can be of course customized If the boot sound boot wav is not on the SD card a little beep is played instead If you don t want any sound when powering the module create a WAV sound file with 100 ms of silence The sounds must be all there on the SD card and be named properly lower case to have the module operating properly Same thing for the configuration files txt In case of losing files the original package of sounds and configuration file are available from Plecter Labs on request We advice the user to keep all its sound and configuration files in specific folders on the hard disk on the computer so that changing the saber s contents remains easy Use some explicit naming of the folders so that you can easily remember what the sound font and configuration files are doing for instance very_sensitive_dark_lord_saber Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Board Overview High Power LED Drive section Ignition Switch Aux Switch Power Suppl i AS i ad Accent LED SD 5 oo pets sete Sisici sls ee E Pads Speaker Pads Motion Sensor MCU User s Notes Plecter Labs is in no way af
27. file is a simple text file to be edited with windows notepad It is composed of 17 parameters that must all be present in the file or then in the override file see furhter Otherwise the module will use default parameters for the missing parameters The text file accepts comments on a stand alone line not mixed with a parameter line The comment symbol is the C language double slash as the very first characters of the line PC now also has another style of comments using the Emacs script syntax To comment has 2 kinds of use One is to disable a line like in the example below Switch 2 switch 1 The other use is to leave a comment or a note to remember something about the configuration or the soundbank like in this example beware chl drive should not exceed 900 color0 700 400 100 the double slash comment is now reserved as the single comment exported to the Real Time Configuration Editor R I C E Use the comment to name the configuration to reflect its theme like Bankl Novastar sound font Certain parameters are integers others are floating point numbers Format must be respected even for a round value like 1 for a floating point parameter 1 0 has to be entered To modify the file insert the SD card in the USB card reader and then browse the contents with windows file explorer on E for instance Double click on file config txt the notepad opens You can directly
28. filiated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or 10 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Getting Started with Petit Crouton The board has been designed so that the user can enjoy an out of the box experience The default package of the SD card contains 6 sound banks with ready made configuration files and accent led sequence files The switch parameter is set to 1 by default which corresponds to a AiG eieliy This way the user doesn t need to hook up a switch to the board the open contact on the activation pad tells the boards to start just after power up allowing the user to test the board with a minimal soldering job of 6 connections power supply speaker high power LED Further install of the board in the hilt and customization of the PC board will require the user to change the parameters in the configuration files Keep in mind that especially if this is your first PC and due to the high configurability of the board you ll spend quite some time on adjusting the parameters to reach the desired look amp feel The SD card slot should remain accessible during that process and possibly once the saber is completed too Wiring and Operating the Module The board must be powered with an appropriate battery pack We highly recommend the use of good quality li ion battery packs made of 14500 or 18650 cel
29. ile will replace the bank settings We suggest to use this file with caution as the user will tend to forget which parameters are overridden then trying to change the settings in the bank config will remain with no effect The override file is by default populated with 13 parameters plus the color profiles concerning the general behavior of the saber and not which aren t really particulars to a certain sound font That split of parameters is conserved by RICE when saving either the current bank config file or the override file Therefore in the case of manual editing of certain parameters or moving a parameter from the config to the override and conversely special care must be taken User s Notes Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 23 Color profiles Profiles definition PRIMZ can embed up to 10 color profiles defining both a blade color and a Flash On Clash FoC color Those profiles are stored in the override txt file with the keyword color and fcolor Each profile for blade or FoC is composed of 3 drive values for their respective channel 1 2 and 3 Each drive value can be in the range of 0 led die off to 1023 led die at its maximum current limited by the external resistor The board is provided with 10 default color profi
30. ines how the shimmer will dig the defined brightness during a clash or a lockup effect A static flash is achieved by leaving that value to 0 That parameter is actually composed of 2 numbers separated by a comma to define the range to apply to the brightness modification during the shimmer focd 0 500 Flash on Clash FoC duration Used when an extra LED die is wired to the board with a Power Xtender circuit and the Flash on Clash Pad focp 5 25 periodicity of the light bursts during the Flash on Clash effect A slow period will produce tight bursts Similar to the shmrp parameter focr 0 25 random value applied to the periodicity of the light burst during a Flash on Clash effect Similar to shmrr but applied to FoC foc 0 100 0 100 Flash on Clash effect depth Defines how deep the FoC brightness is dug for on top or non mixed FoC di c e Also composed of 2 comma separated numbers like the shimmer depth see above switch 0 2 selects if the saber is activated by a normally open or a normally closed switch Certain push on push off switches are more practical and more reliable when released for activating the saber Other switches might simply have an inverted logic normally closed contact When switch is set to 1 the saber lights up when the electrical contact of the switch is closed and conversely when switch is set to 0 If you wish to use a Momenta switch for the blade
31. lding the saber it s therefore impossible to detect the gesture with it without additional sensors We implemented a trick to control the Force Push using our gesture detection system and the auxiliary button The main idea is to use the hand holding the saber as the real while the other hand fakes to do the gesture The fighter will push his opponent with one hand while moving a bit the saber hilt and pressing the aux button at the same time The aim is to trigger a swing gesture while pressing the aux button at the same time it will play the corresponding force sound effect force wav This combo is not so easy to achieve especially is the fighter is strongly left or right handed It might be easier for an ambidextrous person or someone playing a musical instrument But just like dueling with a saber it just requires practice and training to master an expert gesture To get used to the Force Push technique increase in a significant way the value of lockup to stay away from an easy blade lockup triggering Press the aux button first then wave the hilt to trigger a Force Push effect Once you ll get used to this combo aux button then quick waving reduce again the parameter lockup until you obtain a good access to the 3 effects activated by the aux button Blaster Deflection Blade Lockup Force Push trigger of the effect Once the effect has been played if the auxiliary button is kept pressed the
32. les Color profiles color0 0 940 0 fcolor0 940 430 0 color1 0 0 940 fcolor1 900 0 940 color2 940 0 0 fcolor2 0 630 40 color3 0 830 400 fcolor3 700 940 0 3 0 color4 840 0 630 fcolor4 0 0 94 color5 940 430 0 fcolor5 0 940 0 color6 740 930 0 fcolor6 0 740 600 If the user prefers to not use the color profiles only one has to be left to define the default color of the blade When edited ajusted via RICE the profiles are always stored in the override txt file However it is possible to manually remove the color profiles from the override file and create different sets in each bank obtaining various shades and profiles in each sound font Be aware that this profile organization will be discarded and reset if the board is further configured via RICE Profiles browsing To initiate a color change and move to the next profile the user must press the aux switch and then before the lockup timer elapses see the lockup parameter press the activation switch That combo action is easier to achieve with a momentary activation switch however it is also possible to trigger it with a latching activator Once triggered the color starts to change and the force wav sound is played Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or 24 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their
33. ls and including protection PCBs The AW brand makes superior quality batteries while the Ultrafire remains a cost effective solution Unless you have a convenient way to open the hilt and access the inside of the saber Graflex base for instance we strongly recommend the use of a directly connected battery pack with a recharge port vs removable cells Moreover for dueling sabers directly wired battery packs have more reliable connections compared to spring action battery holders A 2 cell li ion will provide a nominal voltage of 7 4V to the board The board isn t compatible with a 3 cell solution without some modifications of the electronics Ni MH battery packs are simply not recommended since they have a bigger energy storage volume ratio and the cost of li ion cells isn t an issue anymore General Power Switch amp Recharge Port Despite the PC board has a very low idle current use when the blade is off and board is in deep sleep mode long term storage of the hilt on a shelf or display case requires the electronics to be fully shut off To avoid the use of an additional general power switch we use the recharge port for that very purpose A pin 2 1 mm Canon socket is a popular choice Two of those pins are connected when nothing is inserted in the socket Contact is disrupted when a plug is inserted Along the years the kill key technique has been developed a fake plastic plug is decorated to look like an actual par
34. nd bank If the user was in bank 3 and there are only 3 banks on the card the board will automatically go back to bank 1 The double press system was initially designed to be fail safe in case of an accidental press on the aux switch If the user prefers to jump to the next font right after the first press set the valsnd parameter to 0 in override txt Creating Your Own Sounds It s a great personal satisfaction to build up your own soundfont Please read our online tutorial about that particular topic Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 26 Installing a Sound Font on the SD card The one stop shop for sound fonts is www saberfont com There is a growing number of sound fonts available at that website including all the legacy fonts from the Novastar Sound CDs NSCD providing so many sound universe for your favorite weapon The board comes with 3 sound font installed in the different sound banks but of course you might install others 2 x Capacit Syst me de Fichiers FAT v Taille d unit d allocation Nom de volume PIcsaBeR 1 First thing backup the SD card on the hard disk Options de formatage Easy to do however most people don t bother I Formatage rapide doing so and end loosing their initial P A
35. of scenarios to be achieved Here are a few examples A Using a GGW tri rebel or tri cree Both green dice are wired in parallel The main blade color isn t affected per say during Flash on Clash the white die is added on top of the 2 green ones during the FoC effect The green dice are configured for a drive of 900 channel 1 white dice is on color channel 2 leading to the following configuration color 900 0 0 fcolor 900 900 0 focmix 001 B SY Using a RGB tri rebel or tri cree The 3 dice are mixed One color is defined as the main blade color while the FoC has another color That configuration will use FoC mixing on all dice Let s say the led is wired as RGB Main blade color is purple red blue and FoC color is whitish FoC parameters aren t used only Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 30 the shimmer parameters affect the blade behavior during the Flash on Clash effect That special all mixed mode will swap back and forth between the main blade and FoC blade colors ensuring that the FoC color doesn t wipe out the main blade color color 300 0 750 fcolor 500 500 500 focmix 111 C md Using a RGW tri rebel or tri cree FoC color is an alteration of the blade main color ie the blade color ch
36. on an obstacle or a hard shake of the hilt The saber setup is located on the SD card which also stores the sounds A configuration text file is editable with a simple text editor such a windows notepad Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners SD card contents Sound Banks and Slots Sounds are stored in the WAV format 16 bits 22050 samples per second The previously used RAW format is no longer supported Petit Crouton PRIZM Version 3 5 can have up to 6 sound banks This allows storing different style in the same saber Each sound bank is stored on the SD card in the sub directories or folders bank1 to bank6 The contents of a bank is called a Sound Font Each sound bank has 32 sound slots split as below upto 4 boot sound boot 2 4 wav 1 power on sound poweron wav 1 power off sounds poweroff wav continuous humming hum wav 8 clash sounds clash1 wav to clash8 wav 8 swing sounds swingl wav tO swing8 wav 4 blaster blocking sound blaster wav to blaster4 wav 1 blade lockup sound lockup wav 1 force effect sounds force wav When the power supply voltage is applied to the board our board boots and plays a little logo sound to notify the user just like a digital camera This little logo mak
37. or disables the repeat of the selected soundbank description sound in the vocal menu When disabled it saves time in the selection process Also when disabled the aux switch confirmation process for rebooting the saber is disabled see rebooting the saber paragraph lockup 0 1000 our module features an auxiliary switch to trigger additional sound visual effects A short pressure on the switch generates the blaster effect the saber blade stops a blaster ray plays one of the blaster sounds A longer pressure maintained triggers a blade lockup effect while the switch is pressed the sound lockup wav is played in loop with some shimmering applied to the high power LED The parameter lockup specifies the duration of the delay before triggering the lockup effect A short value 50 to 100 will trigger the effect almost immediately to trigger a blaster effect the user will have to release the button quickly Conversely a higher value will leave more time to produce a blaster blocking feature resume 0 1 Enables the hum resume feature Instead of starting the hum from the beginning the sound will resume from the position where it has been interrupted within a ballpark of 10 ms High power LED parameters focmix 000 111 Defines how the led dice are either mixed during the Flash on Clash or added on top the main blade color legacy CFv5 FoC effect See further in this document about that specific topic flks 0
38. or that purpose Then all negatives of the LEDs return to a single pad pointed by the blue arrow ground return The main negative of the board can be also used as the accent led ground return Calculating resistors for LEDs R Vsupply Vled LedCurrent In our case Vsupply is the voltage the board provides to power the accent LEDs ie 3 3V The Vled is the forward voltage of the LED usually referred as Vf in the Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 14 datasheet The led current has to be decided by the user depending on the brightness and the maximum rating of the used LED 5 to15 mA are fairly common for most accent LEDs As an example let s consider a 1 6 volt LED red at 10 mA R 3 3 1 6 0 01 170 ohm gt 150 ohm in the classic E12 resistor serie Be sure not to drive too much current in the LED 18 mA max If you wish a good brightness with a low current use high efficiency LED generally coming in a transparent crystal casing Please see further in this document for the sequencing of the accent LEDs High power LED wiring PRIZM is dedicated to color mixing so we will cover only the wiring of a multi die LED in this paragraph 3 die LEDs are obviously proposed for PRIZM but a 4 die LED is also p
39. ossible having 2 dices wired in parallel on a particular channel sommon positive anode Main Positive High Power LED The example above shows a power LED with individual dice Common anode LEDs can be wired just the same Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or 15 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners In most cases a resistor is required on each die especially with the rise of modern LEDs with low forward voltage In certain special cases only a drive adjustment is requested to limit the current in the LED High Power LED resistor calculations There are many online resistor calculators but here are the calculations for both resistor and wattage They aren t difficult and it s important for the user to understand and memorize them Stunt Upgrade If the user is adding sound to an existing saber and is already using a resistor it can be used as it is Beware though this applies only if the battery solution is already Nano Biscotte compliant single cell lt 5 5v If the saber was made with a 2 cell pack the resistor needs to be changed see calculations below Resistor calculation The Ohm s Law gives us R U I R is the resistor we re looking for U is the voltage across the resistor unknown for now and I is the current at which you want to drive the LED
40. ou ve done You want to start over Discarding settings can be done in 2 ways Insert the kill key in the recharge port to cut the power of the saber Non saved changes made to the configuration will be lost discarded Click on the default button in the app to have a default configuration applied to the saber Beware if your switch setup doesn t match the default you might have to play with the switch to maintain the saber on until you have actually changed the switch setting Saving the settings Once you re satisfied with the configuration of the saber you can click on the Save on SB button The saber will play the power off sound followed by a 3 note melody and will reboot with the settings saved As settings are now split between the override txt file and the bank config txt file the user can select which part of the settings to save or both Remember that the color profiles are stored in the override txt file Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 39 Using R I C E as a debug tool Your saber has issues you don t know where it s stuck or why Manually edit the configuration file of the expected sound bank that is accessed when you boot the saber add debug 1 on the first line of the file The board will the be a lot
41. r can be created in the hilt same idea than the bass reflex in a closed speaker To achieve this make sure you have 1 or 2 cm of space and therefore air between the speaker and the hilt cap or pommel The saber is generally not totally full the so internal space of the hilt will make the back resonant chamber for the speaker which will seriously contribute in increasing the volume This amplification with the resonant chamber technique is selective for a certain range of frequencies the bandwidth the length of the chamber will determine the timbre of the saber Try different configurations with an empty camera film box until you find the desired sound coloration To check the obtained volume before putting the whole electronics in the hilt circle the loud speaker between the thumb and the first finger and curve the palm of your hand it will create a quite accurate simulation of a short frontal chamber and a bigger back resonant chamber For comparison purpose a good resonant chamber and a volume set to the maximum produces a sound volume twice to three times louder than a Hasbro Browsing the sound banks rebooting the saber To browse the sound banks and select one the user must use the auxiliary switch After the board has played the boot sound and while the blade is off press the aux switch After one second the board will emit a beep A second pressure on the auxiliary switch will reboot the board and will jump to the next sou
42. ry pack is internally connected to the switched negative tab hence powering the board When a Kill Key is inserted in the port the negative of the board is no longer connected to the negative of the battery pack the board is fully powered down When a charger plug is inserted in the recharge port the charging voltage is reaching both leads of the battery pack Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 12 while the negative of the board is still unconnected from the circuit preventing damages to the electronics and ensuring only the battery pack is connected to the charger for proper charge In the previous picture the green black drawn switched doesn t need to be wired per say it only illustrates the recharge socket internal switch General wiring The board doesn t need so many connections for basic operation Aside of the recharge port if needed a removable single cells might not request one power supply detailed above only a pair of switches the high power LED and the speaker are required to be soldered to get 80 of the features the PC board proposes Act switch mom latch Aux switch mom seer eeeeeane J User s Notes Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industri
43. s been developed in the purpose of improving the quality of DIY sabers sound FX in a significant way During too many years sound modules were obtained from sacrificed toys and remained low quality Master Replica FX sabers broke the line with better sounds and good dynamics However the low resolution motion sensors used as well as closed electronics made those boards impossible to adjust in term of sensitivity or sound contents We have monitored several attempts for building an embedded sound module playing custom amp changeable sounds often based on chipcorders Using bulky parts those were often unreliable and hard to fit in a hilt Not to add those chipcorders were designed for digital answering machines and therefore feature a bad restitution quality voice sample rate Plecter Labs decided to process the internal motion sensors and the sound generation on the same board which requires some non volatile memory Second we needed a simple way to upload or download sound contents or configuration of the saber through a simple and standard way To avoid any plugging problem with a small connector and an easy to loose cable we opted for a high end flash memory card in the SD format now microSD Inserted in a USB card reader like the one we sell the card is seen as a USB storage key and it takes a few seconds only to transfer files to or from the card on Mac or PC without the need of any custom piece of software Plecter Lab
44. s is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Petit Crouton PRIZM V3 5 Features amp Maximum Ratings Dimensions 40x23 5x6 5 mm with the microSD card Power supply 5 5 MAX 2 5A with a single die High power LED SINGLE li ion cell 18650 or 14500 battery recommended Idle current consumption 9 mA deep sleep mode Speaker 4 to 8 ohm Audio output Power 2W Accent LEDs 4 Accent LEDs pad current source 18 mA max per pad Handles momentary or latching for blade activation Up to 6 selectable sound banks via Font Xchange Upto 10 color profiles triggered by a switch action combo Blaster Blocking Force Force Clash and Lockup Fx Blade Flickering Fx Blade Shimmering on Clash Blaster Sounds Up to 4 boot sounds Up to 8 swing and 8 clash sounds Flash on Clash FoC and FoC mixing selection Anti Power Off technology A POP 32 stage accent LED sequencer WAV file support True 16 bit 22 050 kSamples sec crystal clear DAC SD card support up to 16GB SD amp SDHC FAT16 or FAT32 Sandisk and Kingston brands preferred FlexiBlend powered Color Mixing on 3 channels Configurable normal blade amp FoC colors Real Time Configuration Editor R I C E Plecter Labs
45. spective owners 19 Rule of the thumb for a proper configuration process modify only a single parameter at once and work separately on clash and swing parameters Fine tuning the module might take some time but a good configuration will lead you to a very satisfying interaction with the saber Gesture flows amp priorities Our gesture analysis is so fast that sounds could be chained one after the other at light speed We therefore have to slow down the module because too many swing sounds played in a short time are not so realistic For that reason we implement gesture flow limiters for swing and clash sounds Clash sounds generally have the priority over all other sounds except in the following cases lockup is engaged no other sound will be triggered until the aux switch is released a blaster sound is triggered Swings cannot interrupt it A clash can interrupt it A clash sound can interrupt a swing sound even if the swing flow limiter is engaged just after a swing was triggered A clash sound cannot interrupt a previously triggered clash sound if the clash flow limiter is still engaged delay for triggering another one hasnt expired A swing sound cannot interrupt a previously triggered swing sound if the swing flow limiter is still engaged delay for triggering another one hasn expired A swing sound can never interrupt a clash sound if the clash flow limiter is still engaged and whether or not the swing rate limit
46. t of the hilt When inserted it cuts the power supply to the board in the recharge port Of course the port recharges the internal battery pack when an actual charger plug is inserted Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 11 Below an example of a decorative kill key July 2010 The Kill Key must be made out of a non conductive material PVC Nylon etc Here s the usual wiring of the recharge port Please note that not all recharge ports have the exact same pinout User must understand the principle of wiring a recharge port and must be able to identify the different pins of a socket The idea is fairly simple the positive of the battery pack goes to the recharge port central pin referred as tip and the to the positive of the board It s not affected by the kill key The negative of the battery pack goes to the pin of the recharge port that is connected to the outer sleeve of the socket The last pin referred as switched negative pin and goes to the negative of the board The switch is inside the recharge port It s closed when the recharge plug is not in the port inserting a plug in the recharge port will cut power to the board J A N on 2 1 mm female y When nothing is inserted in the port the negative of the batte
47. t surface A The motor makes the board vibrating enough so that it s interpreted as a swing Reduce the speed of the motor and or mechanically isolate the board from the motor Increasing Is can also help but it will make swings more difficult to execute Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 43 Plecter Labs would like to thank his affiliates for their useful input on the Petit Crouton Board specs new features ideas constructive criticism as well as proof reading of that user s manual I also would like to deeply thank our users customers and the illuminated saber hobby community for the trust and support input in my work along the years pushing the design of our favorite props toward perpetual improvement Custom Electronics for Props that WORK Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 44 Non exhaustive list of trademarks owned by Plecter Labs Blaster Move Wake on Move Power on Move Power on Force FoC Flash On Clash Vocal Menu Mute on the go Anti Power On Off Protection APOP R I C E R
48. tery pack negative If you got a USB serial port adapter from another source the pinout might differ If you cannot get the RICE software to talk to the board try swapping Rx and Tx Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 37 To configure the board in real time with R I C E just unzip the software archive in a directory of the hard drive and double click on the program icon You ll get straight in the R I C E main window File Edit Window Help Petit Crouton v3 5 PRIZM R I C E Real Time Internal Configuration Editor Sound Board Link Status Sound Font Comment Description D CED cori COND z e Sound Font Comment port COM3 gt Switch Type Debug o On Off Sound Bank Latching N O Clash 400 Momentary Swing Sound Volume Low 50_ 4 High 220 Upload Download Preset Beep Volume Read Cfg CI o General Sensitivity Save Cfg on SB I 55s Save Override on SB AnG Postar An EGGE Save ALL on SB O On Off plaina Text Config APOP Delay Swing l Reset Board wo So a Reboot Validation Lockup Activation Delay rte onor DEFAULTS ne c Plecter Labs 2005 2014 Save Retrieve Presets on HD Qr o PetitCroutonR I C E_PCv3 5 PRIZM
49. the other accent LED pad the maximum available current per PWM signal is 18 mA Most LEDs are bright and fully happy with 5 to 10 mA Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 28 The on board driver PWM signal doesn t have a pad per say but can be easily grab right next to each direct drive channel Example below provided with color channels 1 2 3 wired as R G B The common cathode of the accent LED can return to the main negative of the board or the accent LED ground pad An alternative solution is to wire each accent die of the crystal chamber LED and resistor in parallel with the matching high power LED die In this case the accent LED has to be common anode like the main LED Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or 29 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Flash on Clash Mixing Techniques During the development of CFv6 and our Flexiblend color mixing engine the Flash on Clash effect was modified to fit specific color mixing requirements so that the Flash on Clash color defined by fled1 2 and 3 However customers liked a lot the FoC effect developed for CFV5 and f
50. ttern evolution with a constant timing A value of 0 for a delay line will stop the sequencer Hence it s possible to have an accent LED animation when the saber starts and the animation stop at the end of the 32 stages or before when a 0 delay is found in the file The pett Using that delay in the sequence will make it loop before reaching the end of the sequence stage31 which males writing short sequences easier by removing the need of any filling or padding with non changing stages When setting random to 1 the sequencer will generate a random pattern at each stage of the sequence ideal for a changing or non conventional animation The delays Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 33 will remain the ones specified in the sequence Like all the timing parameters used in Petit Crouton the delay is expressed in multiples of 2ms The delay can go up to 60 000 which corresponds roughly to 2 minutes It s of course possible to use a LED output to drive an accent LED AND the remote control wire of a power xtender board to drive an additional peripheral requiring more power than what the accent LED pads can offer Deep Sleep flashing LED It s also possible to use one of the 4 accent LEDs to indicate the saber is in deep sleep mo
51. ttery which then has its voltage dropping below the board requirement usually leading to errant unwanted swing sounds being played The board direct driver can act as a linear configurable resistor When getting such a small resistor value below 0 5 ohm AND Vled lt Vcell the drive can be calculated as follows drive 1023 Vled Vcell in our case drive 1023 3 45 3 7 954 That means that the maximum drive value for that die in the color profile must not exceed 954 The max drive value can be also fine tuned using an amp meter in the high power LED circuit adjust the drive until you reach the exact average current required for your LED Never set the max drive under 80 of the maximum value 820 without using an external resistor The user must also understand that the forward voltage of an LED or die cannot just be guessed from the spec sheet of the LED which only provides an average value For best performance the LED Vf must be measured using a bench power supply Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or 25 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Resonant chamber A little 28mm diameter speaker cannot compete with some Hi Fi stereo system neither in term of quality nor loudness However in order to maximize the volume of the saber sound a resonant chambe
52. u can edit those in RICE by selecting the color with the swatch The swatch of course doesn t know how your LEDs are wired multi led or multi die so we setup a color channel swapping system so the color selection with the swatch affects the right current channels 1 2 and 3 Obviously as the swatch deals with RGB only RGB combinations are present there Color fine tuning Once you re happy with the shade you can still adjust individually each drive to make the color more saturated or brighter If you re having a channel on which you discarded the resistor make sure you don t exceed the drive you previously found out as the limit Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners 41 User s Notes Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or 42 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Troubleshooting amp FAQ Q I ve updated the sounds on the SD card and now the module does not work anymore It generates some beeps when it starts A you must format the SD card in FAT16 FAT32 before updating the sounds while it s not necessary to do so for the configuration files that can be edited in pl
53. ult 53 value Swings and clashes are separated using 3 thresholds A swing motion must exceed Is low swing and must remain under hs high swing A clash must simply exceed Ic low clash It s important to maintain a dead zone between hs and Ic to maximize the quality of the motion detection Default parameters have been setup for you and usually only the i parameter has to be touched up However some special cases can be considered The saber is not sensitive enough to the swing placement in the hilt too close to the spinning center spinning style etc decrease parameter 1s of one point of two Don t decrease 1s too much or undesired swing sounds will be triggered When the saber cuts the air too fast the swing is not triggered it s in the dead zone Increase a little bit parameter hs or reduce the speed of your swings The saber often produces a clash sound when the user executes a swing parameter hs is probably too high and too close to parameter 1c If the clash sensitivity is correct decrease parameter hs The saber is not sensitive enough to clashes decrease parameter 1c The user wants the clash to happen only when blade is smacked very hard increase 1c keep it under 1023 Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their re
54. urther referred as on top FoC as it is defined by adding a secondary color or die dice on top of the blade main color So technically from the Flexiblend color mixing engine point of view it is not a color change but rather the addition of another light source which defines pretty well what the Flash on Clash is So due to popular demand I designed a Flash on Clash engine that is compatible with both FoC styles by selecting for each led die which one will be color mixed during the Flash on Clash and which one s will be added on top The FoC configuration uses a new parameter focmix in the configuration file The parameter is defined as a bit field in a similar way than the accent LED sequence states The left most digit 0 or 1 is color channel 3 or formerly FoC2 while the rightmost digit is color channel 1 onboard driver A zero indicates the concerned die isn t mixed therefore on top while a one means that the die will be color mixed As an an example the default focmix value is focmix 011 which means that color channels 1 and 2 will be color mixed while color channel 3 will be added on top The di c e added on top have their own timeline and behavior using the parameters focd duration focp period focr randomness and foc strength while the mixed di c e will be handled by the color mixing engine and shimmer parameters amp timeline That very flexible FoC mixing system allows a lot
55. utput and so on for the 32 stages before looping to the first one The main LED sequence is described for each sound bank in the leds txt text file Simply open the file with window notepad to modify it directly on the SD card or on the hard disk PC has one main accent LED configuration file Leds txt Here is an example of an actual leds txt file eseon Beers Ug E Fichier Edition Format Affichage V Z Blinking LED configuration file random 0 Stages amp Delays The example below shows the accent LEDs with a chasing pattern The state of each LED is represented either by 0 off or 1 on Each s line defines a pattern of the 7 LEDs state while the d line is the duration of the pattern delay Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated associated licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd Industrial Light and Magic Disney or 32 any of their associates All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners Fichier Edition Format Affichage V Z Blinking LED configuration file random 0 s00 0000 doo 50 i 501 0001 d05 65535 The figure below represents the 5 first lines of the sequence of the example text file note the loop instruction using the max value of the delay on line 5 LED 4 0 000 O S 0000 000 The delay between each state can be different for each state line it s not necessary to have a pa
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