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cosmicspace
09-16-2011, 01:50 PM
Hey all. I'm not sure if this is the right place for this post and this may be been discussed here previously but, my search skills didn't find anything. However, there's a LOT of stuff on this board, much to my glee! :) Also, if you don't want to read through the thought process for how I got to asking this question, just skip to the CONCLUSION part below. (I can be a little wordy at times.)

I was pondering a post by a new MHS builder on how he decided not to put sound, motion effects, etc. into a MHS build he did since he wasn't confident in his soldering skills, the extra electronics would drain the battery faster, the sound wasn't necessary for his usage and that the swing sensor was too sensitive.

All of these are very valid reasons for his build and show he was doing a great deal of thinking in his design. However, the last reason stuck with me. Sleeping on it, I got to thinking about the motion and clash sensor and how if there was an accelerometer in the hilt, that maybe the sensitivity could be adjusted. (After more research, I learned that the swing sensor is, in essence, an accelerometer, albeit one that is used rather digitally.)

But then I thought it could be customized to raise in pitch with the speed of the swing dynamically. This, of course, would necessitate a change in how sound fonts are stored and played since static sounds for swings wouldn't be appropriate any more; they would need to be more algorithmic in nature with a modifier for swing speed would need to be incorporated.

This led to a thought train of acceleromoters and how they are used which the items that came to mind are smartphones such as Motorola's various Droids (coincidentally, the name is licensed from LucasFilms) and Wii Remotes.

CONCLUSION: Wii remotes have an accelerometer, a soundboard, a speaker, a battery pack, an led emitter (well, infrared)...wait, that IS a LED lightsaber! This can't be a new idea. Has anyone considered or tried gutting a Wii remote and sticking the electronics into a lightsaber hilt? Some modifications would be required of course since I doubt the Wii remote is giving enough power to light up a full lightsaber blade even with the LED replaced.

Bear in mind that a great deal of this post is me thinking through the keyboard so some, or even many or all of these ideas might not be feasible, desirable or even possible.

Mandalorian
09-16-2011, 02:03 PM
This would probably take a TON of modifications to be honest. The Wii remote sends the data to the Wii console, which then uses that information for game purposes. You'd have to make the Wii remote not send that signal and instead use that to generate all the sound itself. Also, there's an IR camera in the Wii remote, the IR lights are actually in the ends of the sensor bar. That's how it figures out orientation and such.

If it was an easy mod, then I agree, it would be cool. Someone would have done it though.

As for the calculation of the sound based on speed of the saber, this would be interesting, but there's nothing that makes a Wii remote better at this than the currently available saber board options. I don't know all the details behind it, but I'm assuming it would take a lot more processing power than the current boards can process, not to mention drain battery life even faster, but again, that's just an assumption.

All in all, very creative idea, I just don't think it's effective. I too have also wanted sounds that adjust depending on the speed the saber is moving, but until some awesome saber board guru like Erv comes up with an effective way to do it that isn't super power consuming, I'll just wait and use what's currently available.

+1 for creativity. ;)

cosmicspace
09-16-2011, 09:47 PM
Ooo, good point. I forgot the sensor bar has the LED. That pretty much fouls things up royally for this idea. I suppose the other lights might possibly work as an output in some fashion but we've left the realm where things would be simple and easy enough to be worthwhile. (I suppose one COULD just strap a Wii with custom software to their back with a BIG battery and an inverter but then we'd be getting silly here.)

I'll chew on the motion-adjusting-sound idea, though. I'm studying to be a computer/electrical engineer and this would keep me motivated in my studies. :)

Thank you for the insight, though. I appreciate it!

Mandalorian
09-16-2011, 10:41 PM
I'll chew on the motion-adjusting-sound idea, though. I'm studying to be a computer/electrical engineer and this would keep me motivated in my studies. :)

Thank you for the insight, though. I appreciate it!

If you can figure it out, that'd be awesome. I'm sure we're not the only ones that would love a feature like that. Best of luck to ya.

And you're welcome. I always try to be as helpful as possible, so it's good to know that I did my job. Thanks for that.

Grubok
09-17-2011, 09:12 AM
just a thought.. I have been thinking about better swing sound creation methods myself, and I think if you use a Triple Axis Accelerometer with some sort of sound mixer you may achieve what is required problem is a small enough sound mixing device. I haven't quite figured it out myself yet but a simple google search of "Triple Axis Accelerometer" you can find some smaller than a quarter now.