Eandori
05-28-2008, 01:47 AM
Ok, here it finally is. The promised Hyperblade--Luxeon comparison videos and data! It's late and I'm really tired and my baby is awake so I'm going to calm her down then get some sleep.
Here are the video links
Part I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxTLosiu_7s
Part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sw-4rPp2Qk
Part III: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtqJMW2TKAI
Part IV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agKBd2emstU
================================================== ==
======== Settings, config method, parts used, setup ===========
================================================== ==
These were the same Hyperdyne sabers used in Novastar's comparison video. They
were 2nd hand to him and after his comparisons he sent them to me for repairs
and so I could see them in person and do my own comparison. I made many repairs
to those lightsabers and much of it was noted in the videos. I also spent much
time talking to Mark Cheng and Jedibum to make sure I understood the Hyperblades
and how to set them up properly.
After making repairs and doing some testing I learned that a V2 Hyperblade board
with a V2 blade needs around 4 amps at 11v to run at full brightness. That works
out to around 45 watts of power! I also discovered that Novastar's video compare
could not have been proper because he used the 7.2v battery on the blue, and the
green was hooked up directly to a wall charger because the 11v battery fried. A
Li-Ion charger probably puts out around 0.5 to 1 amp so there's no way either of
the Hyperblades in his video were at max brightness. No faulting or attacking
Novastar though, he put a lot of work into his video and then sent the equipment
to somebody with more electronics experience to do exactly what I did.
As you can clearly see in these 4 videos compared to my other videos (of Proto2
specifically) my luxeon sabers are not as evenly lit as Proto2 was. I have spent
a good amount of time trying to figure that out so far, and currently I think
it's due to the optics. I built the blades exactly the same, but in my current
MHS tubes the lenses don't seem to be the same height off the actual star. Which
would change the focal point of the lens. I'll have to figure that out for sure
later... but for now I just want to mention that other luxeon sabers I made in
the past were more evenly lit. These are still pretty good though.
I wanted to use the brightest blue and green Hyperblades, and the brightest blue
and green Luxeon sabers. That meant I had to use Luxeon V overdriven at 1 amp for
luxeon sabers, and V2 blade/board Hyperblades at full power. But even past that,
I needed to verify that all sabers were working in top order. So I had Mark
Cheng use a light meter to measure his own sabers at a distance of 10cm from hilt,
middle, and tip. Then I asked Mark to mail that exact same light meter to me so
I could measure the Hyperblades I had to see if they were close in brightness to
his own. What I saw is that Mark's seems to be a bit brighter, but not a ton. He
seemed to also get higher values at the hilt then I did with respect to the
relative middle/tip values. All I can guess on that is user error with the light
meter. Could be his or my own, but I can say for certain that the angle of the
light meter played a huge factor.
Mark created a cardboard measuring tool for the light meter to be mounted in.
I was thinking of that, but intended something different then what he used. Since
I needed to use the same light meter as Mark I was forced to use his method of
measuring light to validate these Hyperblades were on par. But for my final
comparison I used a different method, one I was far more pleased with the
consistency of the results. You can see both light meter setups in the videos.
Although I edited all the video footage to flow from part I to IV, that's not the
exact time sequence it all happened in. I just shot video as I went and edited it
at the end to make it more clear to the watcher. This isn't a movie, or
documentary just footage taken while testing then jammed onto YouTube later for
your review.
I did not do any durability testing, or any intensive sound or weight balance
testing with the Hyperblades. Although I do have some comments for those in the
conclusion. I avoided durability testing because although I own the luxeon sabers
I don't own the Hyperblades. Even beyond that, the Hyperblades arrived on my
doorstep already damaged goods. I don't believe that would be fair to do
durability testing with repaired damaged goods.
For all testing, I tried to turn off all blade flicker, turn up brightness to max
for all sabers, and make sure all batteries were fully charged. On the (Mark's
Method) of testing using the Green Hyperblade I have noticed (after finishing the
video) that the green Hyperblade was pulsing a bit. Meaning not fully bright all
the time. I do believe I fixed that for the light testing using my own method
though. As a note about the Lux meter, it seems to be more sensitive to blue then
green and red. My green Luxeon V saber is clearly brighter then the blue luxeon V
to the naked eye, but the lux meter gave very high lux results to the blue sabers.
The same went for Hyperdyne, the green hyperdyne was clearly brighter then the
blue, yet the blue scored higher lux results.
I was in contact with Erv' Plecter, Greytale Novastar, Xwingband, and Corbin Das
for the luxeon lightsaber experts. All the luxeon experts and Hyperblade experts
were offering me their feedback and suggestions during the testing. I wanted to
include everybody early in the process to make sure I was doing things right. Even
so... chances are I screwed things up somewhere. Feel free to reply to this post
with feedback or comments on what I should have done differently or what others
could do differently in the future. Having said that, I think my conclusions
should be pretty darn clear by the end and I think most people will agree with
what I seemed to find.
================================================== ======
================== Edwin's expected results ===================
================================================== ======
Going into this testing I fully expected the Hyperblades to be brighter, but not
by a lot. Based on Novastar's video and some of my own assumptions, I thought
the luxeon sabers would be fairly close in brightness.
I also expected the Blue Hyperblade to be FAR superior to the blue luxeon. And
I thought the green luxeon V would be much closer but still lose to the green
Hyperblade.
================================================== ====
========== Mark's Method of brightness measurement ============
================================================== ====
A cardboard "measuring stick" was made by Mark to keep the light meter 10cm
away from the sabers at the 3 measurement spots. The main defect of Mark's
design was that it needed to be turned 90 degrees so the "ruler" of the
measurement stick was not blocking light below the ruler of the saber. Mark
did a great job posting many videos of his sabers brightness at 10cm and 50cm
for all blue, green, and purple sabers.
..............................Emit.....Mid...Tip
Blue Luxeon:.............| 521 | 118 | 57 |
Blue HyperDyne:........| 844 | 638 | 385 |
Green Luxeon:...........| 381 | 132 | 80 |
Green Hyperdyne:......| 573 | 695 | 360 |
--- Mark's results from his sabers using the same meter ---
..............................Emit....Mid....Tip
Blue HyperDyne:......| 1043 | 785 | 541 |
Green Hyperdyne:....| 803 | 688 | 415 |
================================================== ====
========== Edwin's Method of brightness measurement ===========
================================================== ====
For my method, the sabers laid on the carpet with the light meter directly
above them. The light meter never moved, and the sabers slid backwards to
the 3 positions for light measurement.
..............................Emit...Mid...Tip
Blue Luxeon:...........| 270 | 147 | 60 |
Blue HyperDyne:......| 600 | 549 | 284 |
Green Luxeon:.........| 166 | 103 | 41 |
Green Hyperdyne:....| 399 | 450 | 244 |
================================================== ==
========== Hyperblade runtime vs. brightness testing ==========
================================================== ==
Luxeon:
- Resistor Driven: Brightest at full charge and getting dimmer as the
batteries drain.
- Current regulated: User desired brightness until the battery voltage
drops below the required voltage of that LED. Then the blade gets
dimmer quickly.
Depending on LED, driving current and battery, most luxeon setup will
run between 30 min and 3 hours.
Hyperdyne:
There was only one type of runtime performance since there are only
2 kinds of boards and they both drive the blade using the same
methods. Essentially the Hyperblade performs like a resistored luxeon
setup. Brightest at full charge and getting dimmer as the batteries
drain.
At the max setting, the Hyperblades consume around 45 watts of power.
In comparion a luxeon setup will consume around 5 to 7 watts of power
so it's no suprise that Hyperblades cannot hit long runtimes.
Hyperblades have an automatic feature that makes them power down to a
a lower current setting after being on for 2 min. that allows the heat
to soak out of the blade/battery. I observed current going from 4 amps
down to around 1.5 amps when the system would throttle down. The user
needs to wait over 2 min, then the system will allow full blade current
again. Due to this, the runtime test had to be done with cool-down
stages
However at lower settings, the Hyperblades were still as bright or
brighter then my luxeon sabers and had runtimes closer to 35 min to 1
hour. In the captured data values below, you can clearly see the
relationship between brightness (measured in Lux) and system current
(dropping as the battery dies) I got around 20 min of full brightness
runtime due to the 2500mAh battery I made just for this testing. When
I stopped both the blade and battery were pretty warm to the touch, even
after the 2.5 minute cooldowns in between!
Time.......Lux........Current................Time. ......Lux........Current
100:00...1225.......3.90....................77:30. ....986........3.64
99:30............................................7 7:00.....899........3.46
99:00.....1051.......3.56....................76:30 .....864........3.39
98:30.....997.........3.43....................76:0 0.....841........3.36
98:00.....960.........3.37....................75:3 0.....824........3.33
== wait 2.5 min cool ==....................== wait 2.5 min cool ==
95:30.....1103.......3.67....................73:00 .....975........3.61
95:00.....1000.......3.52....................72:30 .....888........3.45
94:30.....954.........3.42....................72:0 0.....855........3.38
94:00.....921.........3.38....................71:3 0.....834........3.35
93:30.....901.........3.36....................71:0 0.....818........3.32
== wait 2.5 min cool ==...................== wait 2.5 min cool ==
91:00.....1056.......3.65....................68:30 .....970........3.60
90:30.....954.........3.49....................68:0 0.....885........3.43
90:00.....915.........3.42....................67:3 0.....851........3.36
89:30.....888.........3.39....................67:0 0.....830........3.33
89:00.....870.........3.37....................66:3 0.....814........3.30
== wait 2.5 min cool ==....................== wait 2.5 min cool ==
86:30.....xxx.........3.66....................64:0 0.....930........3.55
86:00.....924.........3.49....................63:3 0.....867........3.41
85:30.....892.........3.42....................63:0 0.....836........3.34
85:00.....868.........3.39....................62:3 0.....814........3.30
84:30.....850.........3.37....................62:0 0.....798........3.27
== wait 2.5 min cool ==....................== wait 2.5 min cool ==
82:00.....999.........3.65....................59:3 0.....930........3.54
81:30.....911.........3.48....................59:0 0.....861........3.39
81:00.....878.........3.41....................58:3 0.....830........3.31
80:30.....855.........3.37....................58:0 0.....808........3.28
80:00.....837.........3.55....................57:3 0.....792........3.25
== wait 2.5 min cool ==....................=== Done, 20 min of full power run-time ===
================================================== ==
=========== Edwin's personal opinions/observations ============
================================================== ==
This entire process was VERY time consuming and I'm glad to be done with it! From
the first power on with the 11v battery it was very clear that Hyperblades were
indeed brighter. The desire to just make that statement and not waste all the time
doing the measured tests was pretty strong... but I wanted to put an end to this
debate.
First off, I strongly reccomend that any Hyperblade users switch over to either a set
of Nickel Metal Hydride cells, or at the very least Lithium Ion cells packs that are
rated for over 4 amps. Typically you want to use batteries that are rated for at least
twice the current that you will be using. That goes for any product with batteries.
So.. Hyperblades are absolutely brighter. No doubt about it. Perhaps when luxeon
gets over the 600 lumen mark there will be a competition, but for now it's hands
down the Hyperblades and the numbers/videos clearly show that. However, there is
a lot of downside to the Hyperblades I noticed first hand.
- The blades were about twice the weight of Luxeon blades.
- The center of gravity is deep into the blade, spins will be harder.
- The blade board inside the blade rattles a bit on impact.
- The system requires 45 watts, compared to the 5-7 watts of luxeon systems.
- You only get 2 minutes of full power, then either must power down or have the
System throttle down it's own brightness.
- Sound is better then Hasbro, worse then CF and Master Replica.
- Only one sound font and no customizing of sounds
- No adjustment to motion sensor
- blade is much harder to remove
- finished luxeon blade is $30, while finished Hyperblade (blade only) is $250?
I love to duel with my sabers. Balance matters a lot. I LOVE the sensitivity of a
CF enabled setup, and I love the custom sound fonts. I want at least an hour of
runtime and I want to use my sabers for a good 25 min at a time. So for me, I'll
be sticking with CF driven luxeon sabers for now. But if you don't duel, mainly
want a bright-as-can-be show blade, the Hyperblade seems to be a clear winner.
Thanks to everybody who helped with this comparison! I'm going to take a break
for a bit.
Edwin
Here are the video links
Part I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxTLosiu_7s
Part II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sw-4rPp2Qk
Part III: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtqJMW2TKAI
Part IV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agKBd2emstU
================================================== ==
======== Settings, config method, parts used, setup ===========
================================================== ==
These were the same Hyperdyne sabers used in Novastar's comparison video. They
were 2nd hand to him and after his comparisons he sent them to me for repairs
and so I could see them in person and do my own comparison. I made many repairs
to those lightsabers and much of it was noted in the videos. I also spent much
time talking to Mark Cheng and Jedibum to make sure I understood the Hyperblades
and how to set them up properly.
After making repairs and doing some testing I learned that a V2 Hyperblade board
with a V2 blade needs around 4 amps at 11v to run at full brightness. That works
out to around 45 watts of power! I also discovered that Novastar's video compare
could not have been proper because he used the 7.2v battery on the blue, and the
green was hooked up directly to a wall charger because the 11v battery fried. A
Li-Ion charger probably puts out around 0.5 to 1 amp so there's no way either of
the Hyperblades in his video were at max brightness. No faulting or attacking
Novastar though, he put a lot of work into his video and then sent the equipment
to somebody with more electronics experience to do exactly what I did.
As you can clearly see in these 4 videos compared to my other videos (of Proto2
specifically) my luxeon sabers are not as evenly lit as Proto2 was. I have spent
a good amount of time trying to figure that out so far, and currently I think
it's due to the optics. I built the blades exactly the same, but in my current
MHS tubes the lenses don't seem to be the same height off the actual star. Which
would change the focal point of the lens. I'll have to figure that out for sure
later... but for now I just want to mention that other luxeon sabers I made in
the past were more evenly lit. These are still pretty good though.
I wanted to use the brightest blue and green Hyperblades, and the brightest blue
and green Luxeon sabers. That meant I had to use Luxeon V overdriven at 1 amp for
luxeon sabers, and V2 blade/board Hyperblades at full power. But even past that,
I needed to verify that all sabers were working in top order. So I had Mark
Cheng use a light meter to measure his own sabers at a distance of 10cm from hilt,
middle, and tip. Then I asked Mark to mail that exact same light meter to me so
I could measure the Hyperblades I had to see if they were close in brightness to
his own. What I saw is that Mark's seems to be a bit brighter, but not a ton. He
seemed to also get higher values at the hilt then I did with respect to the
relative middle/tip values. All I can guess on that is user error with the light
meter. Could be his or my own, but I can say for certain that the angle of the
light meter played a huge factor.
Mark created a cardboard measuring tool for the light meter to be mounted in.
I was thinking of that, but intended something different then what he used. Since
I needed to use the same light meter as Mark I was forced to use his method of
measuring light to validate these Hyperblades were on par. But for my final
comparison I used a different method, one I was far more pleased with the
consistency of the results. You can see both light meter setups in the videos.
Although I edited all the video footage to flow from part I to IV, that's not the
exact time sequence it all happened in. I just shot video as I went and edited it
at the end to make it more clear to the watcher. This isn't a movie, or
documentary just footage taken while testing then jammed onto YouTube later for
your review.
I did not do any durability testing, or any intensive sound or weight balance
testing with the Hyperblades. Although I do have some comments for those in the
conclusion. I avoided durability testing because although I own the luxeon sabers
I don't own the Hyperblades. Even beyond that, the Hyperblades arrived on my
doorstep already damaged goods. I don't believe that would be fair to do
durability testing with repaired damaged goods.
For all testing, I tried to turn off all blade flicker, turn up brightness to max
for all sabers, and make sure all batteries were fully charged. On the (Mark's
Method) of testing using the Green Hyperblade I have noticed (after finishing the
video) that the green Hyperblade was pulsing a bit. Meaning not fully bright all
the time. I do believe I fixed that for the light testing using my own method
though. As a note about the Lux meter, it seems to be more sensitive to blue then
green and red. My green Luxeon V saber is clearly brighter then the blue luxeon V
to the naked eye, but the lux meter gave very high lux results to the blue sabers.
The same went for Hyperdyne, the green hyperdyne was clearly brighter then the
blue, yet the blue scored higher lux results.
I was in contact with Erv' Plecter, Greytale Novastar, Xwingband, and Corbin Das
for the luxeon lightsaber experts. All the luxeon experts and Hyperblade experts
were offering me their feedback and suggestions during the testing. I wanted to
include everybody early in the process to make sure I was doing things right. Even
so... chances are I screwed things up somewhere. Feel free to reply to this post
with feedback or comments on what I should have done differently or what others
could do differently in the future. Having said that, I think my conclusions
should be pretty darn clear by the end and I think most people will agree with
what I seemed to find.
================================================== ======
================== Edwin's expected results ===================
================================================== ======
Going into this testing I fully expected the Hyperblades to be brighter, but not
by a lot. Based on Novastar's video and some of my own assumptions, I thought
the luxeon sabers would be fairly close in brightness.
I also expected the Blue Hyperblade to be FAR superior to the blue luxeon. And
I thought the green luxeon V would be much closer but still lose to the green
Hyperblade.
================================================== ====
========== Mark's Method of brightness measurement ============
================================================== ====
A cardboard "measuring stick" was made by Mark to keep the light meter 10cm
away from the sabers at the 3 measurement spots. The main defect of Mark's
design was that it needed to be turned 90 degrees so the "ruler" of the
measurement stick was not blocking light below the ruler of the saber. Mark
did a great job posting many videos of his sabers brightness at 10cm and 50cm
for all blue, green, and purple sabers.
..............................Emit.....Mid...Tip
Blue Luxeon:.............| 521 | 118 | 57 |
Blue HyperDyne:........| 844 | 638 | 385 |
Green Luxeon:...........| 381 | 132 | 80 |
Green Hyperdyne:......| 573 | 695 | 360 |
--- Mark's results from his sabers using the same meter ---
..............................Emit....Mid....Tip
Blue HyperDyne:......| 1043 | 785 | 541 |
Green Hyperdyne:....| 803 | 688 | 415 |
================================================== ====
========== Edwin's Method of brightness measurement ===========
================================================== ====
For my method, the sabers laid on the carpet with the light meter directly
above them. The light meter never moved, and the sabers slid backwards to
the 3 positions for light measurement.
..............................Emit...Mid...Tip
Blue Luxeon:...........| 270 | 147 | 60 |
Blue HyperDyne:......| 600 | 549 | 284 |
Green Luxeon:.........| 166 | 103 | 41 |
Green Hyperdyne:....| 399 | 450 | 244 |
================================================== ==
========== Hyperblade runtime vs. brightness testing ==========
================================================== ==
Luxeon:
- Resistor Driven: Brightest at full charge and getting dimmer as the
batteries drain.
- Current regulated: User desired brightness until the battery voltage
drops below the required voltage of that LED. Then the blade gets
dimmer quickly.
Depending on LED, driving current and battery, most luxeon setup will
run between 30 min and 3 hours.
Hyperdyne:
There was only one type of runtime performance since there are only
2 kinds of boards and they both drive the blade using the same
methods. Essentially the Hyperblade performs like a resistored luxeon
setup. Brightest at full charge and getting dimmer as the batteries
drain.
At the max setting, the Hyperblades consume around 45 watts of power.
In comparion a luxeon setup will consume around 5 to 7 watts of power
so it's no suprise that Hyperblades cannot hit long runtimes.
Hyperblades have an automatic feature that makes them power down to a
a lower current setting after being on for 2 min. that allows the heat
to soak out of the blade/battery. I observed current going from 4 amps
down to around 1.5 amps when the system would throttle down. The user
needs to wait over 2 min, then the system will allow full blade current
again. Due to this, the runtime test had to be done with cool-down
stages
However at lower settings, the Hyperblades were still as bright or
brighter then my luxeon sabers and had runtimes closer to 35 min to 1
hour. In the captured data values below, you can clearly see the
relationship between brightness (measured in Lux) and system current
(dropping as the battery dies) I got around 20 min of full brightness
runtime due to the 2500mAh battery I made just for this testing. When
I stopped both the blade and battery were pretty warm to the touch, even
after the 2.5 minute cooldowns in between!
Time.......Lux........Current................Time. ......Lux........Current
100:00...1225.......3.90....................77:30. ....986........3.64
99:30............................................7 7:00.....899........3.46
99:00.....1051.......3.56....................76:30 .....864........3.39
98:30.....997.........3.43....................76:0 0.....841........3.36
98:00.....960.........3.37....................75:3 0.....824........3.33
== wait 2.5 min cool ==....................== wait 2.5 min cool ==
95:30.....1103.......3.67....................73:00 .....975........3.61
95:00.....1000.......3.52....................72:30 .....888........3.45
94:30.....954.........3.42....................72:0 0.....855........3.38
94:00.....921.........3.38....................71:3 0.....834........3.35
93:30.....901.........3.36....................71:0 0.....818........3.32
== wait 2.5 min cool ==...................== wait 2.5 min cool ==
91:00.....1056.......3.65....................68:30 .....970........3.60
90:30.....954.........3.49....................68:0 0.....885........3.43
90:00.....915.........3.42....................67:3 0.....851........3.36
89:30.....888.........3.39....................67:0 0.....830........3.33
89:00.....870.........3.37....................66:3 0.....814........3.30
== wait 2.5 min cool ==....................== wait 2.5 min cool ==
86:30.....xxx.........3.66....................64:0 0.....930........3.55
86:00.....924.........3.49....................63:3 0.....867........3.41
85:30.....892.........3.42....................63:0 0.....836........3.34
85:00.....868.........3.39....................62:3 0.....814........3.30
84:30.....850.........3.37....................62:0 0.....798........3.27
== wait 2.5 min cool ==....................== wait 2.5 min cool ==
82:00.....999.........3.65....................59:3 0.....930........3.54
81:30.....911.........3.48....................59:0 0.....861........3.39
81:00.....878.........3.41....................58:3 0.....830........3.31
80:30.....855.........3.37....................58:0 0.....808........3.28
80:00.....837.........3.55....................57:3 0.....792........3.25
== wait 2.5 min cool ==....................=== Done, 20 min of full power run-time ===
================================================== ==
=========== Edwin's personal opinions/observations ============
================================================== ==
This entire process was VERY time consuming and I'm glad to be done with it! From
the first power on with the 11v battery it was very clear that Hyperblades were
indeed brighter. The desire to just make that statement and not waste all the time
doing the measured tests was pretty strong... but I wanted to put an end to this
debate.
First off, I strongly reccomend that any Hyperblade users switch over to either a set
of Nickel Metal Hydride cells, or at the very least Lithium Ion cells packs that are
rated for over 4 amps. Typically you want to use batteries that are rated for at least
twice the current that you will be using. That goes for any product with batteries.
So.. Hyperblades are absolutely brighter. No doubt about it. Perhaps when luxeon
gets over the 600 lumen mark there will be a competition, but for now it's hands
down the Hyperblades and the numbers/videos clearly show that. However, there is
a lot of downside to the Hyperblades I noticed first hand.
- The blades were about twice the weight of Luxeon blades.
- The center of gravity is deep into the blade, spins will be harder.
- The blade board inside the blade rattles a bit on impact.
- The system requires 45 watts, compared to the 5-7 watts of luxeon systems.
- You only get 2 minutes of full power, then either must power down or have the
System throttle down it's own brightness.
- Sound is better then Hasbro, worse then CF and Master Replica.
- Only one sound font and no customizing of sounds
- No adjustment to motion sensor
- blade is much harder to remove
- finished luxeon blade is $30, while finished Hyperblade (blade only) is $250?
I love to duel with my sabers. Balance matters a lot. I LOVE the sensitivity of a
CF enabled setup, and I love the custom sound fonts. I want at least an hour of
runtime and I want to use my sabers for a good 25 min at a time. So for me, I'll
be sticking with CF driven luxeon sabers for now. But if you don't duel, mainly
want a bright-as-can-be show blade, the Hyperblade seems to be a clear winner.
Thanks to everybody who helped with this comparison! I'm going to take a break
for a bit.
Edwin