What would you like on buttered toast V4.x?

[Madcow]

great work erv,
What are the dimensions of the new system?

MC

[Marsupial]

I fully agree about making the pitch change only when iddle... Maybe I'm wrong, but its interesting mainly when you barely moves... when there's lot of action, you don't quite mind if the hum changes. Its when you are slowly moving the saber that its interesting.

[erv]

agreed with all that, added that to the wish list. I'll keep the hum pitch shifting in iddle only, perfect ! and I'll add a polarity to the effect (pitch up or down for saber down and conversaly)
new dimensions for madcow : 27 or 28 mm wide (sorry, still using a normal SD, cause you don't need a stamp plier to hold it during sound upgrade), and about 57 or 58 mm long. Capacitors were centered on the board so that they won't touch the hilt, it reduces the required bounding volume (compared to the cylinder volume). Well, not so different thant in the past, but 1mm here and there

[addon]
Updated roadmap in first post
[/addon]

[SaberSentinel]

Ok, I'm still not clear on how the pitch shifting thing will work. In the movies it seems like there is no "swing" sound. IMHO there is only the idle hum and when the saber is moved the hum changes depending on how fast the saber is swung. Is this going to be an option on the v2?
Ultra is doing this for his new soundboard and I had decided to get that until I heard you might offer that feature. If you do, I'm getting a v2!

[LordArgyll]

Ok, I'm still not clear on how the pitch shifting thing will work. In the movies it seems like there is no "swing" sound. IMHO there is only the idle hum and when the saber is moved the hum changes depending on how fast the saber is swung. Is this going to be an option on the v2?
Ultra is doing this for his new soundboard and I had decided to get that until I heard you might offer that feature. If you do, I'm getting a v2!

It's an interesting concept, but I'm not sure it would sound quite right. It's not just a pitch shift, there's also a doppler affect that gives the saber swing its characteristic buzz.

Actually, what I'd like to see is a swing that uses three segmented samples... one the pitch rise at the start of the swing, then the peak of the swing (the buzz) that plays in a loop for as long as the saber is in motion, then the dropoff. Instead of playing a bunch of different samples end to end, you'd get that continuous WHUMMM until you stopped swinging.

I'd have to hear Ultra's board in action.

[erv]

So... some were lucky to hear or see Ultra's board ? any thread or media to point out ? I'm really looking forward to see/hear his board cause he was planning to come with the "missing" sound board and fill the blank space between hasbro/MR boards and mine !

Lord Argyll is right. Shifting the hum is not enough. I was initially planning to use that as well, a year and half ago now, but the tests were not satisfying at all. It's clear that the doppler effect is missing. Shifting the hum, even with a shifting enveloppe (like ADSR, but applied to pitch shifting, high pitch, pitch sustained, pitch back to normal) does not change the spectrum of the sound. Not enough, at leat. The doppler effects creates a phantom serie of harmonics, shifted in the freq domain and summed with the original sound. With shifting of the phantom spectrum depending on the movement of the blade. Do do so, you need :
- some reasonable CPU power
- a polyphonic sound module, or enough RAM to store all sounds : you have to be able to read the sound, compute the doppler effect and put both out on speaker
I'll be honnest, I can't do it... but I'm using an 8 MHz chip (I used to have 10 MHz, but I removed the crystal and changed the chip, so I even have less power, so I hugely optimized the code)

this is why I'm using audio samples. Now, about the new features, to sum it up clearly :

- saber idle : hum is playing, hum freq is altered by the orientation of the saber, lower when saber is pointing down. If you move a bit the saber, but not enough to trigger a swing or a clash, you'll have some variation on the pitch as well. But it's applied only to the hum, any other effect will have a normal sample rate (except for the swing read below). I sucessfully managed a smooth transition on the sample rate so that when swapping between for instance lsaber down idle (low pitch) and clash (normal sample rate) you don't hear a stepped/gap transition

- now for the dynamic pitch part : pitch of swing sounds will also be altered depending on the hardness of the movement. I'll try to put an enveloppe on that, as proposed above (max pitch rising up to the middle of the sound, then go back to normal).

this last feature opens up TONS of possibilities :
- dyn shifting off : you use your 8 swings sounds to create the diversity of swing sounds. Can be 8 differents sounds, or 8 similars sounds pitched differently
- dyn shifting on : 8 times the same sound in the swing slots, dynamic pitch shifting will create the diversity
- dyn shifting on + various sounds (which must not be too much a mix of "hard" and "soft sounds") : mixed effect

I'll soon come with a sound + video demo when this will be setup and programmed

[addon]
ooohh, I forgot : I had an idea yesterday in the train, I coded it, and I've just tested it, it works great !!!
It's a special dedicace to Xwing : BLADE IGNITION DURATION MOD
As I might have said before, the new ignition ramp shaping is much better than on V1 AND it's is controlled by the duration of the sound, and it's audio sample accurate. Means that if you play the file slowly at the ignition or poweroff, blade ignition duration is modified Got it ? now, orientation to pitch measurement was modified so that measurements is applied at power on and off, so if you want to light up the blade at normal speed, put the saber up, power on, if you want to slow it down, put the hilt down, then power it on. Works with saber power off as well !!!
As usual, all my effect can be activated or disabled.

New great ideas from some exchange on my forums : LED sequence control, to provide a little animation of LEDs when the saber is on. I'll implement a driver for 3 or 4 LEDs, with configuration file to setup the LED sequence and transition time. Maybe a configuration parameter as well for special LEDs patterns when a clash is detected, or blaster/lockup
what do you think ?

[/addon]

[LordArgyll]

The new dynamics sound really sweet, especially the swing pitch-shifting. I like that the harder swing will actually sound harder now. And it sounds like the new idle hum shifting will solve that desire for a bank of "slow" swings. Overall it sounds like handling the saber will be a lot more dynamic and a more satisfying interaction.

And the LED control will be nice for those of us that like extra blinkies for flavor.

(I vote for Nutella by the way. Yum.)

[erv]

the swing pitch shift is now working. The core is so "dynamic" now, that's incredible !!! idle hum control, swing control...
I keept the orientation<->pitch shifting applied as well on lockup effect, so that when you twist your body (and the saber) during a blade lockup, you also have some pitch changing, that's really great !
To be accurate : the swing dynamic pitch shifting is not putting the pitch higher than with the normal playback speed, cause like for the hum shifting, playing sound too fast does not leave some CPU time to my board to do the rest of the tasks (sensor sampling, current regulation, gesture recognition etc). The pitch is therefore shifted down.
Mean that if you do a swing at minimum hardness (close to the low swing thresh or to the noisegate) you get the sample playback turn to the minimum (minimum which is now specified by the parameter "dynshifting" on the sd card config file). If the swing goes to the max swing thresh, sample playback is not altered and is playing normally.
For instance :
playback speed : 130
dynshifting : 50
noisegate & ls = 12
hs = 50

if swing is found at 13, sample playback speed is set to 130 - 50 = 80 (very deep). If swing is found at 50, playback speed = 130 - 0 = 130 normal speed, normal pitch.
Pitch shifting based on sound playback speed is not *real* pitch shifting, but IMO it sounds great, especially for a little electronic board running at 8 MHz

[Marsupial]

Erv your board is getting so advanced... and all of it is still configurable. It seams like your V2 really is going to be the saberbuilder's dream.

I'm happy you're looking into making a few animated leds; while being seriously extra sugar on the toast, it will give a lot more customisation options to the builders.

I like all the dynamic interaction that you're putting in. It makes a more realistic saber, so the experience is just way better.

[Dregan]

Erv - any possibilty of adding a second/third Lux LED driver? I'm looking for the ability to run a V2 in either a staff (with seperate on/off, maybe) or more importantly, a Tri-Lux (when they finally ship)

I mentioned it elsewhere, but you could use the SD card to hold a color profile, assuming you have a RGB Tri-Lux, thus eliminating the manual pots we've seen on other RGB's. That way, you don't accidentally change colors mid-swing in a dual...

(which would be funny to watch...)