I present: Pertinax, an MHS saber with a home-made custom sound board.
Vital Stats:
Hilt is full MHS Parts from TCSS
RGB Tri-Rebel 3-up main LED
In-hilt recharge system
7.4v Li-ion 800mAh 14500 Battery Pack
Sound-synchronized Blade Ramp-up/Ramp-down
Flash-on-clash
Lockup
3 "mini" sound fonts which each contain these sounds:
- Power-up
- Power-down
- x4 Swing sounds
- x4 Clash sounds
- Lockup
3 quick-switch profiles
136 possible color settings
Let me start this post by saying that when it comes to saber building, I consider Erv (of Plector Labs) and Niagon (creator of Saber Igniter) to be among my personal heroes. Their contributions to the hobby have allowed for great power and flexibility to be added to any saber build in much the same way that Tim has allowed us all to create great looking hilts with the MHS system. So, in keeping with the old adage that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I set out to create my own sound board. I did this not because existing products weren't good enough, but because I sought the adventure of it; to get just a taste of what it must have been like to develop early prototypes of those now familiar products. It may also have been partially because I'm an engineer and I just couldn't help myself.
For the core electrics hardware, I wanted to select components that a hobbyist with moderate soldering skills could reasonably be expected to assemble on their own. That meant no surface mount components, no etched circuit boards, and no connections that required the hands of a surgeon to complete, and no exotic chemicals or tools. This was the first a major design requirement.
The second consideration was size: It had to fit in standard diameter MHS parts. This also influenced component selection and placement on the board.
After much research, I selected the components above: A WT588d programmable sound module, 3 small MOSFETs, a 5V/5A regulator, and a the 3.3 volt version of an Arduino Pro Mini.
Code, code, and more code. This part took me months of bread-boarding and coding. For the software, I targeted functionality somewhere between an MR board and a Saber Igniter. Switchable profiles was a must as well as multiple sound fonts, but I wanted to keep it fairly simple so I didn't incorporate an accelerometer opting instead for simple swing/clash sensors. See the stats above for details on what I ended up with.
After much trial and error, I got a crude test-rig wired up so I could do some testing off of my bread-board.
After that I moved on to putting the components on some pref-board in a more permanent way. Then I made a sled/chassis out of some 1-inch polyurethane pipe with my Dremel and mounted the board, other core components, and the battery.
Wire it up, stick in the MHS hilt, and bam: We've got a multi-color, multi-sound font saber!
Here is a video of it working.
Note: I made the video to demo the board before I finished the grip section at the bottom of the hilt. The bottom section still screws off in the same way to reveal the core electronics. This is so I can get at it to pull the WT588d and reprogram it to change sound fonts, or to pull the Arduino to make firmware changes via the programming pin headers.
As always, thanks to everyone on these TCSS forums for teaching me so much over the years. I couldn't have done this without such a helpful community. And of course, thanks to Tim for making such awesome hilt parts. This is my 4th saber, but up until this build I had always used a sink tube for all or most of my hilt body. After building a full MHS saber, all I can say is: Wow! I love the Modular Hilt System!
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