I've seen people use short string blades made out of a few neopixel straw hat leds....this seems like the most straightforward plug, your making in essence a mini blade.


Quote Originally Posted by Starganderfish View Post
It's been a few years since my last saber build so I'm a little out of touch with the latest and greatest in technology. However, my next two hilts are in the planning stages - Korbanth ANH Graflex and Korbanth ROTJ Luke/gullwing. I'm looking at the whole neopixel idea and I think it sounds pretty cool - the brighter blade and the ability to add some custom ignition/retraction effects is cool.
But one of the things I really enjoy about the tri-cree/LED star setup, is the ability to display the hilt both with and without a blade and retain the light-up feature. One of the problems for me with string blades has always been the lack of a light-up display when the blade is removed.
I'm wondering if there is a workaround with the NeoPixel setup? Thanks to the TCSS quick connect neopixel PCB connector, you can easily remove the blade, complete with the NeoPixel string. This is handy for transport and display but unfortunately leaves the hilt without a light up feature. What I would like to know is, how feasible is it to create a separate blade plug that also has a quick connect and a NeoPixel component?
I came across these NeoPixel Jewels https://www.adafruit.com/product/2226 from Adafruit. A bit like a tri-cree star, with 7 x 5050 RGB LED with Integrated Drivers mounted on a round PCB - 23mm diameter. A 1" thin walled blade has an inner diameter of 22.2mm.
A single thin walled blade will make multiple plugs (with a number of cool ideas out there for adding an "emitter" on top) and with a little sanding or dremelling you could easily take another millimeter or so off the interior thickness of the plug, for maybe the bottom 5-10 mm of the plug. That's enough space to insert a neopixel jewel, mounted on a quick connect PCB.
Pretty much the same idea as the standard neopixel bade, only instead of two strips glued inside the blade and connected to a quick release plug, you have a small round PCB on top of a quick connect, all inside the plug. Won't be as bright as the 144 per/m strips but for a hilt only display piece, it could be fine. And at $6 a pop for the jewel, $10 for a thin wall blade and $17 for a quick connect PCB, it seems worth investigating.
In that scenario you could even skip making a seperate blade for every hilt, just have one or two full blades to swap around and an individual neopixel plug for each hilt.
Is there anything obvious that I'm missing that prevents this from working? Not sure if the Jewel is addressable in the exact same fashion as a strip, but it looks like it is?