Plecter Labs Crystal Focus Saber Core LS V6.50 User manual

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light and Magic or any of
their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners.
Crystal Focus Saber Core™ LS V6.50
Illuminated Saber Controller Pro
for LED STRIPS (CF-LS
User’s manual
© Erv’ - Plecter Labs – v 6.50 – April 20 3
[email protected]
http://www.plecterlabs.com
Important release information
-Since version 5.x we use WAV sound files, RAW isn’t supported anymore
-Board is compatible with FAT and FAT32 (beta)
-MacOS is supported (beta)
-This current CF-LS is inherited from the CF v5. 0 and v6. 0
-Simplified gesture recognition settings
-3D motion sensor for a more detailed & accurate motion sensing
-Embedded PLI and 7 LED bargraph sequencer
-Audio output up to W/8 ohm or 2W/4 ohm
-LED strip current support up to 2A per segment (x6 segments)
-Real Time Configuration Editor R.I.C.E
We spent a lot of time writing this manual to ensure all the important
information is provided for proper use of that board. If you are new to saber
building, to the use of Crystal Focus boards, or simply to electronics in
general, we highly recommend you print a copy of that document and keep
it with you during the whole process of installing CF in your hilt.
Modification, copies or distribution of that document is strictly prohibited
© Plecter Labs / Erv’ Plecter 2005-20 3

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light and Magic or any of
their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners.
2
Index
CRYSTAL FOCUS SABER CORE™ LS V6.50 1
I MPORTANT RELEASE INFORMATION 1
I NTRODUCTION 4
LED strips 4
Sound section 5
Crystal Focus LS V6.50 Features & Maximum Ratings 6
Placement & Installation 7
T OOLS AND P ARTS REQUIRED TO INSTALL / OPERATE THE MODULE 8
H OW DOES IT WORK ? 8
SD CARD CONTENTS , S OUND B ANKS AND S LOTS 9
B OARD O VERVIEW 10
U SER ’ S N OTES 10
G ETTING S TARTED WITH C RYSTAL F OCUS 11
W IRING AND O PERATING THE M ODULE 11
General Power Switch & Recharge Port 11
General wiring 14
U SER ’ S N OTES 14
Animated Accent LEDs 15
Calculating resistors for LEDs 15
M AIN C ONFIGURATION F ILE 17
P ARAMETERS AND FINE TUNING THE SABER 18
LED STRIP WIRING 25
M AKOTO WIRING ( FULL PARALLEL SETUP ) 25
H ASBRO -F X BLADES 26
S ERIALLEL ™ WIRING 27
S ERIALLEL CLASS II 27
S ERIALLEL CLASS III 28
LED STRIP ASSEMBLY 29
LED BINNING 32
LED STRIP BLADE CONNECTOR 32
LED STRIP DRIVE ADJUSTMENTS 34
LED STRIP DRIVE ADJUSTMENTS 34
M EASURING THE SEGMENT FORWARD VOLTAGE (V F ) 34
R ESONANT CHAMBER 36
B ROWSING THE SOUND BANKS – REBOOTING THE SABER 36
C REATING Y OUR O WN S OUNDS 37
I NSTALLING A S OUND F ONT ON THE SD CARD 37
A
UDIO P LAYER – I S ABER 38
C LASHES , S WINGS & B LASTER ( RANDOM ) S ELECTION M ODES 39

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light and Magic or any of
their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners.
3
ADVANCED WIRING & USAGE 41
W IRING A TACTILE FEEDBACK MOTOR AND A PROGRESSIVE POWER O N LED 41
W IRING A GENERAL P OWER -O N I NDICATOR / A CCENT LED 43
W IRING A F LASH ON C LASH ™ (F O C™) LED STRIP 44
A CCENT LED S SEQUENCER 46
Stages & Delays 47
D EEP S LEEP FLASHING LED 48
A CCENT LED S AS A B ARGRAPH : P OWER O N /O FF S EQUENCES & PLI 48
PLI TIPS & TRICKS 49
S PECIAL A CCENT MODE FOR LED1 50
I GNITION AND R ETRACTION SEGMENT SEQUENCE 51
I GNITION & R ETRACTION DURATION AND SPEED 51
“F ORCE PUSH ” EFFECT 52
M OTION A CTIVATED I GNITION : P OWER ON M OVE / P OWER ON F ORCE 53
I GNITION S OUND A NGULAR S ELECTION 53
M ULTIPLE P OWER -O FF S OUNDS 54
P OWER S AVING M ODES & U SAGE S CENARIOS 54
Idle Mode 54
Deep Sleep Mode 54
Scenarios & Usage 55
M UTE O N T HE G O ™ 56
U SER ’ S N OTES 56
USING R.I.C.E.(REAL-TIME INTERNAL CONFIGURATION EDITOR) 57
G ETTING STARTED WITH R.I.C.E. 57
R EADING THE CURRENT SETTINGS 59
C HANGING SETTINGS 59
D ISCARDING SETTINGS 59
S AVING THE SETTINGS 59
U SING R.I.C.E. AS A DEBUG TOOL 59
T ROUBLESHOOTING & FAQ 61

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light and Magic or any of
their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners.
4
Introduction
Our new Saber Controller Pro is the union of our evolutive saber sound module and
our luxeon driver board we designed back in 2005. Driven by a single processor, this
module features a perfect synchronization between light and sound effects with the
possibility to setup each effect with parameters stored on our SD-Config ™ technology.
Crystal Focus Saber Core (LS) V6. 0 has of course a lot of new features and
capabilities compared to the original CF V , including 6 bit sound playback, WAV
format support, 6 different sound banks, blaster blocking, force push effects and
more!
Warning : You’ve just acquired an electronic board containing parts
sensitive to ESD. Final wiring & assembly is under responsibility of the user
with the appropriate tools and ESD protection.
If you’re not familiar with ESD, please visit :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_discharge
Plecter Labs can not be held responsible for improper use or assembly of
the Crystal Focus board.
LED strips
This specific version of the CF-LS drives led strips instead of the high-power LED we
have been using for years in illuminated sabers. The LED strip allows a slightly better
evenness of the blade light as well as a more realistic ignition scheme as seen in the
former MR (and now Hasbro) sabers.
The CF-LS drives 6 segments of LEDs, and an additional Flash on Clash (FoC) channel
that allows an extra strip of white LED to affect the blade color during special Fx
(blade clash, blaster blocking, blade lockup).
The LED strip driver section of the board is different than our regular CF driver by the
fact it is NOT regulating the current. The user must pay great attention to tuning the
proper drive and use the appropriate resistor to adapt the CF-LS parameters to his
own blades. As a matter of fact, there is no “standard led strip” at the moment, but
we kept the CF-LS as open as possible to adapt to most wiring, the only condition
being that it’s a common anode (+) blade.

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light and Magic or any of
their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners.
5
Sound section
The Plecter Labs sound board is unique. It has been developed in the purpose of
improving the quality of DIY sabers sound FX in a significant way. During too many
years, sound modules were obtained from sacrificed toys and remained low quality.
Master Replica FX sabers broke the line with better sounds and good dynamics.
However, the low resolution motion sensors used as well as closed electronics made
those boards impossible to adjust in term of sensitivity or sound contents.
We have monitored several attempts for building an embedded sound module playing
custom & changeable sounds, often based on chipcorders. Using bulky parts, those
were often unreliable and hard to fit in a hilt. Not to add those chipcorders were
designed for digital answering machines, and therefore feature a bad restitution
quality (voice sample rate – 8 KHz).
Plecter Labs decided to process the internal motion sensors and the sound generation
on the same board which requires some non-volatile memory. Second, we needed a
simple way to upload or download sound contents or configuration of the saber
through a simple and standard way.
To avoid any plugging problem with a small
connector and an easy-to-loose cable, we
opted for a high-end flash memory card in
the SD format (now microSD).
Inserted in a USB card reader like the one
we sell, the card is seen as a USB storage
key and it takes a few seconds only to
transfer files to or from the card, on Mac or
PC, without the need of any custom piece of
software.

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light and Magic or any of
their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners.
6
Crystal Focus LS V6.50 Features & Maximum Ratings
-Dimensions : 54.3x23.5x7 mm (with the microSD card).
-Power supply : 5.5 to V. 2 li-ion cells ( 8650 or 4500) batteries
recommended.
-Idle current consumption : 9 mA (deep sleep mode)
-Speaker : 4 to 8 ohm.
-Audio output Power : 2W
-Accent LEDs : 7
-Accent LEDs pad current source : 8 mA max per pad
-On-board PLI
-Handles momentary or latching for blade activation
-6 selectable sound banks via audio menu
-Blaster Blocking, Force, Force Clash™ and Lockup Fx
-Blade Flickering & Core pulse Fx
-Blade Shimmering on Clash
-Flash on Clash™ (FoC™)
-Anti Power On / Off technology (A-POP™)
-Blaster Move™
-Power on Force™
-Hilt Angle Ignition Sound Selection
-Alternate Power Off sounds (motion vs no motion)
-Up to 4 boot sounds
-Up to 6 swing and 6 clash sounds
-Configurable Idle mode & power saving timer
-32 stage accent LED sequencer
-WAV file support
-True 6 bit, 22.050 ksample/sec crystal clear DAC
- iSaber Audio Player, up to 50 WAV tracks, play/pause/shuffle
-SD card support : up to 2GB, FAT 6 or FAT32. Sandisk and Kingston brands
preferred.

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light and Magic or any of
their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners.
7
Placement & Installation
Ideally, the module is placed in the hilt so that :
-the motion sensor is at ” or more from the spinning center of the hilt
-the SD card remains easily accessible.
Usually the pommel area is a good choice, however hilts made of 2 halves can have
the board installed in the top side of the saber.
Securing the board can be done using double sided foam tape or a velco strap.
Rechargeable battery pack
Motion sensor µSD Card
Hilt Double sided foam tape
Pommel
Hand

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light and Magic or any of
their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners.
8
Tools and Parts required to install/operate the module
-an ESD safe soldering station & soldering wire (60/40, mm OD or eq.)
-pliers (flat and cutting)
-a Digital Multimeter / DMM (strongly advised, so useful)
-a latching or momentary switch for the blade ignition, and a momentary switch
for the auxiliary switch.
-wire & heat shrink
-rechargeable Batteries
-recharge port (canon 2. mm socket)
-appropriate Battery charger
-a USB SD card reader accepting micro SD card or a regular SD card reader with
a micro to regular SD card adapter.
-a computer
-a digital audio editor software handling WAV files if you wish to create your
own sound fonts.
How does it work ?
The two main effects of the lightsaber is the production of a sound when the blade is
cutting the air (swing, producing a sort of Doppler effect) and the impact between two
blades (clash). The motion sensor we use is capable of detecting rotation movement
and shocks. The main difficulty is to make the proper difference between the two
classes of movements. The sensor is digitized by a microcontroller, then analyzed in
realtime and compared to a modelization of clash and swing gestures using low
latency DSP techniques (now down to 0 ms or less).
The algorithm has many trimming parameters in order to be adjusted to the fighting
style of each user or fighter, and also to each saber hilt design. As a matter of fact,
each saber is unique and various interaction scenarios can be desired. A setup allows
then to change the sensitivity to the swing and the clash, depending if the user wants
a really verbose saber, or casual sound FX. Along the different versions we improved
our gesture recognition algorithms which now have semi automated parameterization,
the user selecting only basic thresholds and the general sensitivity. Moreover, default
settings usually suit most users.
The swing gesture is a rotation of the blade leading it to cut the air at an
average speed. The clash gesture is a sudden shock of the blade on an
obstacle, or a hard shake of the hilt.
The saber setup is located on the SD card which also stores the sounds. A
configuration text file is editable with a simple text editor such a windows notepad.
The CF-LS also has full support of our Real Time Configuration Editor (R.I.C.E.) just
like the regular CF.

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light and Magic or any of
their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners.
9
SD card contents, Sound Banks and Slots
Sounds are stored in the WAV format ( 6 bits, 22050 samples per second). The
previously used RAW format is no longer supported.
WAV sound files must comply with the format above or they will be skipped
during the boot, leading to sound gaps or board failure.
Crystal Focus Version 5.0 has 6 sound banks. This allows storing different “style” in
the same saber. Each sound bank is stored on the SD card in the sub-directories (or
folders) bank1 to bank6. The contents of a bank is called a Sound Font
In the root directory of the SD card, you’ll find the sound bank selection menu files:
6 descriptive sounds of the sound banks (one – two – three – four –
five - six.wav)
a sound announcing the bank selection menu (menu.wav)
a sound announcing the selection of the audio player – iSaber (player.wav)
a background sound for the menu (menubgnd.wav)
The sounds played by the saber are stored into 6 sub-directories (folders). During the
selection of the sound bank (see further in this document), the latter is identified with
a descriptive sound (one – two – three – four – five - six.wav) which
can of course be customized. The user can record is own voice and describe the
contents of the sound font/bank from the simplest manner like saying “bank one” to
something really descriptive like “dark side configuration”, or by naming the weapon.
Each sound bank has 32 sound slots split as below :
a boot sound (boot.wav)
4 power on sounds (poweron.wav to poweron4.wav)
Power on Force (poweronf.wav)
2 power off sounds (poweroff.wav and pwroff2.wav)
continuous humming (hum.wav)
8 clash sounds (clash1.wav to clash8.wav)
8 swing sounds (swing1.wav to swing8.wav)
4 blaster blocking sound (blaster.wav to blaster4.wav)
 blade lockup sound (lockup.wav)
2 force effect sounds (force.wav and force2.wav)
When the power supply voltage is applied to the board, our board “boots” and plays a
little logo sound to notify the user, just like a digital camera. This little logo makes
sure the Crystal Focus Saber Core started properly and it gives a special identity to the
saber and to the loaded sound font. This sound can be of course customized. If the
boot sound boot.wav is not on the SD card, a little beep is played instead. If you
don’t want any sound when powering the module, create a WAV sound file with 00
ms of silence.

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light and Magic or any of
their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive property of their respective owners.
0
The sounds must be all there on the SD card and be named properly (lower case) to
have the module operating properly. Same thing for the configuration files (.txt). In
case of losing files, the original package of sounds and configuration file are available
from the Plecter Labs website, in the download section. We advice the user to keep all
its sound and configuration files in specific folders on the hard disk on the computer
so that changing the saber’s contents remains easy. Use some explicit naming of the
folders so that you can easily remember what the sound font and configuration files
are doing, for instance [very_sensitive_dark_lord_saber].
Board Overview
User’s Notes
LED strip
segment
pads (x6)
Speaker Pads
Motion Sensor MCU
Accent LED
Pads
Aux. Switch
Ignition Switch
Power Supply
Pads
µSD
Common Anode
(+) of the LED
segments