Open Saber Sound Project

[Melek Taus]

glad you like the idea clockwork. i think at this point i would like to address my issue that ive had for some time. I have had one of these for some time now. http://orbitalmachining.com/html/tri-lux.html and was hoping that the rebel endors would spawn the idea of a board with sound that would run it, alas however to no avail. i have searched many sites looking for breakouts to add to a http://www.nkcelectronics.com/wee-co...h-arduino.html or a http://www.nkcelectronics.com/arduino-nano.html . some of these include http://www.nkcelectronics.com/breako...ransflash.html and http://www.instructables.com/id/1.5A...for-LEDs-for-/ . i would also like to incorporate this into one board and use the http://www.qprox.com/products/Page-16067/qt411.html as a touch senseing pot that would fit in the slot of http://www.saberkit.com/clamps.html , with a possible sleep mode that would be a pli(power level indicator). the micro controller would contol each led seperately so it would need several banks i suppose. this would make for a sleeker design without knobs. i dont pretend to know enough about electronics to even know if this is possible, but please let me know what you think.

Damn nice ideas. Haven't looked much into the processor, but you can find others that are similar. What I liked was the breakout board for the sd card. Didn't even know about the 3 on 1 lux holder...that's cool.

I use to program in assembly...not a fun thing to do, and C++. Haven't done it since college 1993 (before C++ was standardized) but shouldn't be too big a deal. I would totally be able to do this if I was just fresh out of college. I knew all of this stuff. Now I repair alarm system, CCTV and remote banking equipment. Not a big demand in that for programming. I loved it though. I liked to see something I created work. As for Basic wouldn't be hard to learn either really.

Melek

[Azrael]

hello to all my name is ronnie I´ve living in argentina for almost 20 years now so I´m sorry for my english but its a little rusty. I´ve been reading these posts in search to build my own sound board cause you may not know but the only lightsabers that came to this country were the 1995 hasbro sabers, and they dont exist any more. I´m in the process of building 2 sabers 1 for me and the other for my son, I have basic knowledge of electronics and in my search I came across this open project which has the program script the pcb layout and the diagram, its an mp3 player that i think could be modified to serve our needs http://www.teuthis.com/html/mmc_mp3.html since i have no idea of how to do it or if its worth the effort im leaving it in the hands of who ever knows more. In the desire of a finished project I wish the best

[Darth_DevilGuy]

hello to all my name is ronnie I´ve living in argentina for almost 20 years now so I´m sorry for my english but its a little rusty. I´ve been reading these posts in search to build my own sound board cause you may not know but the only lightsabers that came to this country were the 1995 hasbro sabers, and they dont exist any more. I´m in the process of building 2 sabers 1 for me and the other for my son, I have basic knowledge of electronics and in my search I came across this open project which has the program script the pcb layout and the diagram, its an mp3 player that i think could be modified to serve our needs http://www.teuthis.com/html/mmc_mp3.html since i have no idea of how to do it or if its worth the effort im leaving it in the hands of who ever knows more. In the desire of a finished project I wish the best

thats pretty interesting, it's a very small board too, and could be used in a modular setup with something like corbin's driver. I'm not sure what it would take to modify it though, it seems to have two playback modes based on a momentary switch, we'd need at least three modes and two switches to activate it.

[Clockwork]

The problem I see with MP3 player methods is they are contrary to our needs. Sound boards need to be small. To acheive sound using .wav, we need a place to store the sound, a microcontroller, an amp and speaker. To acheive sound using MP3, you need everything above and a mp3 decoder chip. The only advantage is that the MP3s are smaller files than .wavs, this isn't really a problem though as you average CF sound font (vs. 4) is about 1.5mb and a microsd cards come with at least 512mb storage now adays. Not to mention it is also additional cost. By the time you have reprogrammed the Microcontroller to detect swings, etc. you have more work to do than if you just used .wav files.

On another note, there seems to be a few people interested in programming. Are these same people also interested in getting a replicantfx board or chip? I know TroyO on another thread has voiced some interest. I am literally waiting until I have my internet connected on Thursday until I go ahead and get my ReplicantFX board ordered. Tim mentioned we may be able to get a bulk discount. If others are interested, PM me.

[Orthus]

Ok, I've been hacking away on both the sound and the accelerometer stuff. An interview with Ben Burt that I found gave me an insight. Basically, swings were hums that were Doppler shifted by playing the hum through a speaker and re-recording using a microphone that he swung past the speaker. I've implemented some code to shift the raw sound data using some interpolation to "create" new data in between samples, allowing me to effectively change the hums playback rate. Then, I'm using the accelerometer to give me a value of the current acceleration on the board and use that value to calculate the offset (Doppler shift) to apply to the hum playback rate. I now have a prototype that gives a swing, but there's a) some lag/dead areas; b) more response in certain directions (the best is in the positive Z-axis direction of the accelerometer); and c) I haven't tweaked the shifting so that the swing tone sounds right. I've ordered a different accel from SparkFun that should allow me a faster sample rate...right now, since the accel is a serial communication, I can only sample it at around 80-100 hz. The new accel is cheaper (yay) and can be sampled at 6Khz.

The breakdown is:
powerup/powerdown via a momentary contact switch
hum playback that can be shifted based upon accelerometer input, but is somewhat lacking in authenticity.

Progress, albeit slow.

[Clockwork]

Good Work Orthus, I am pretty sure this technique was employed on the ultrasound V1. But like you said, the results were not fantastic so they also put in some recorded swings. Using this method should also help you with the the memory issue as you won't need to store a collection of swing sounds.

[Ari-Jaq Xulden]

okay thought id post this as i know clockworks been looking for an small amp http://www.kelvin.com/Merchant2/merc...oduct_Count=15 this site also has triangular leds http://www.kelvin.com/Merchant2/merc..._Code=ELPCLETL that would work and fit nicely for a luke upgrade http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=300229166207

[Clockwork]

okay thought id post this as i know clockworks been looking for an small amp http://www.kelvin.com/Merchant2/merc...oduct_Count=15 this site also has triangular leds http://www.kelvin.com/Merchant2/merc..._Code=ELPCLETL that would work and fit nicely for a luke upgrade http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=300229166207

Good Find. I am inclined to buy one and take the IC details and then just order the parts (after testing it of course). Also, pretty smooth move on the triangular LEDs, I have never even heard of them before.

[erv]

changing the speed of the playback speed will not produce a doppler effect. You'll get something closer only if the original sound at normal playback speed is mixed with the shifted version. This woud require tons of ram and a DSP, not a classic microcontroller (or at least, with very high clock speed, but in any case a classic MCU architecture isn't meant to do dsp properly). This to achieve the creation of the image freq based on the displacement of the source of the sound (doppler effect). Also, note that doppler isn't using acceleration.

Add to this that changing the playback speed of a soundfile isn't pitch shifting per se, despite it produces a similar effect.
I implemented this feature back in oct or nov 2005 and I was definitly sure it will never give a good result, unless done with the real DSP algorithm.
Despite getting a ****fted / doppler hum is nice theoritically for the original flavour & spirit of Ben Burtt and SW :
- it's so limitative to a single sort of swing sound (aka a modified version of the hum, nothing else)
- it will never be close to the movie sounds

Not throwing a rock in the pond,
just sharing experience (please don't reinvent the wheel once more, neither warm water)
Erv'

[swear000]

Would this work for making sound?

http://www.parallax.com/Store/Access...%2cProductName

It is $20 but I am not sure about it's sound quality.