Plecter Labs Crystal Focus Saber Core V7.5 User manual

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Disney or Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light
and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
1
Crystal Focus Saber Core™ V7.5
Illuminated Saber Controller Pro – User’s manual
© Erv’ - Plecter Labs – v 7.5
Edition 1.0 - January 2015
erv@ lecterlabs.com
htt ://www. lecterlabs.com
Important release information
-Board is com atible with FAT and FAT32
-MacOS is su orted
-Dual Motion sensor with Motion Fusion™
-Sim lified gesture recognition settings
-Im roved gesture recognition dynamic range and resolution
-StabFx™, S inFx™ & ComboFx™
-Color mixing with the FlexiBlend™ engine on 4 channels
-On-the-fly Color rofiles change
-Audio out ut u to 1W/8 ohm or 2W/4 ohm
-LED current u to 3A
-Su orts luxeon III, V, rebel (old or new), seoul LEDs, Ledengin, tri-rebels, tri-
Cree, Quads.
We spent a lot of time riting this manual to ensure all the important
information is provided for proper use of that board. If you are ne to saber
building, to the use of Crystal Focus boards, or simply to electronics in
general, e highly recommend you print a copy of that document and keep
it ith you during the hole process of installing CF in your hilt.
Modification, co ies or distribution of that document is strictly rohibited
© Plecter Labs / Erv’ Plecter 2005-2015

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Disney or Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light
and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
2
Index
CRYSTAL FOCUS SABER CORE™ V7.5 1
I MPORTANT RELEASE INFORMATION 1
I NTRODUCTION 5
High-Power LEDs (aka Luxeon™) 5
Sound section 6
Features & Maximum Ratings 7
Placement & Installation 8
T OOLS AND P ARTS REQUIRED TO INSTALL / OPERATE THE MODULE 9
H OW DOES IT WORK ? 9
SD CARD CONTENTS , S OUND B ANKS AND S LOTS 10
U SER ’ S N OTES 11
B OARD O VERVIEW 12
G ETTING S TARTED WITH C RYSTAL F OCUS 12
W IRING AND O PERATING THE M ODULE 12
General Power Switch & Recharge Port 13
General wiring 14
U SER ’ S N OTES 15
Animated Accent LEDs 16
Calculating resistors for LEDs 16
C ONFIGURATION F ILES 18
T HE PREFERENCES FILE 19
P ARAMETERS AND FINE TUNING THE SABER 20
M OTION & G ESTURE DETECTION PARAMETERS : 20
G ESTURE TYPES 20
G ESTURE FLOWS & PRIORITIES : 21
S OUND PARAMETERS : 21
H IGH - POWER LED PARAMETERS : 25
U SER ' S N OTES : 26
T HE SABER OVERDRIVE PROTECTION 27
C OMBOS 27
C OLOR PROFILES 28
Profiles definition 28
Profiles vs. standard blade color definition 28
Profiles editing in R.I.C.E. 28
Profiles browsing 29
R ESONANT CHAMBER 30
B ROWSING THE SOUND BANKS – REBOOTING THE SABER 30
C REATING Y OUR O WN S OUNDS 31
I NSTALLING A S OUND F ONT ON THE SD CARD 31
A UDIO P LAYER – I S ABER 32
C LASHES , S WINGS & B LASTER ( RANDOM ) S ELECTION M ODES 33
ADVANCED WIRING & USAGE 35
W
IRING A TACTILE FEEDBACK MOTOR AND A PROGRESSIVE POWER O N LED 35

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and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
3
W IRING A GENERAL P OWER -O N I NDICATOR / A CCENT LED 37
S IMPLE F LASH ON C LASH ™ / F O C™ EFFECT (CF V 5 LEGACY MODE ) 37
COLOR MIXING 39
P SEUDO COLOR MIXING ( WITHOUT THE C OLOR X TENDER ™ B OARD ) 39
A CCURATE COLOR MIXING ( USING THE C OLOR X TENDER ™ B OARD ) 40
U SING ALL THE 4 COLOR CHANNELS 41
4 CHANNEL WIRING WITH THE CE X ( DUAL - CELL RECOMMENDED ) 41
4 CHANNEL WIRING WITHOUT THE CE X ( SINGLE - CELL RECOMMENDED ) 41
F LASH ON C LASH ™ M IXING T ECHNIQUES 42
O RIENTATION CONTROL OF THE L OCKUP C OLOR 44
A DD A CRYSTAL CHAMBER TO YOUR SABER 44
U SING PWM DRIVING SIGNALS 44
U SING THE M AIN DRIVER AND C OLOR E XTENDER POWER OUTPUTS 45
CONVERTING THE CRYSTAL FOCUS TO SINGLE CELL USE 46
ACCENT LEDS SEQUENCER 47
S TAGES & D ELAYS 48
D EEP S LEEP FLASHING LED 49
A CCENT LED S AS A B ARGRAPH : P OWER O N /O FF S EQUENCES & PLI 49
PLI TIPS & TRICKS 50
S PECIAL A CCENT MODE FOR LED S #5 TO #8 51
H ALF DISPLAY / H ALF BARGRAPH 51
S ABER WITH 4 ACCENT LED BARGRAPH AND ILLUMINATED CRYSTAL CHAMBER 52
S ABER WITH 8 ACCENT LED S SPLIT OVER PLI AND ANIMATED ACCENTS 52
B ANK MENU SPECIAL SETTINGS 53
B OOT DIAGNOSTIC & DEBUGGING 54
U SING R.I.C.E. 54
U SING THE BARGRAPH DEBUG 55
“F ORCE PUSH ” EFFECT 56
M OTION A CTIVATED I GNITION : P OWER ON M OVE / P OWER ON F ORCE 56
I GNITION S OUND A NGULAR S ELECTION 57
M ULTIPLE P OWER -O FF S OUNDS 57
P RE P OWER -O N AND P OST P OWER -O FF S OUNDS 58
P OWER S AVING M ODES & U SAGE S CENARIOS 58
Idle Mode 58
Deep Sleep Mode 58
Scenarios & Usage 59
M UTE -O N -T HE -G O ™ 60
M UTE -O N -T HE -B OOT ™ 60
U SER ’ S N OTES 60
USING R.I.C.E.(REAL-TIME INTERNAL CONFIGURATION EDITOR) 61
G
ETTING STARTED WITH R.I.C.E. 61

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and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
4
R EADING THE CURRENT SETTINGS 63
C HANGING SETTINGS 63
D ISCARDING SETTINGS 63
S AVING THE SETTINGS 64
U SING R.I.C.E. AS A DEBUG TOOL 64
C OLOR S ETUP & C OLOR M IXING 64
Reference Current 65
Rough color setup 65
Color fine tuning 65
Manual color setup 65
Flash On Clash™ / FoC™ 66
Lockup Color 66
Color mixing specific issues 66
U SER ’ S N OTES 67
T ROUBLESHOOTING & FAQ 68

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Disney or Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light
and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
5
Introduction
Our new Saber Controller Pro is the union of our newest evolution of our saber
sound module and our luxeon driver board that we designed back in 2005. Driven by
a single rocessor, this module features a erfect synchronization between light and
sound effects with the ossibility to setu each effect with arameters stored on our
SD-Config ™ technology. Crystal Focus Saber Core V7 has, of course, a lot of new
features and ca abilities com ared to V1-V6, including 16 bit sound layback, WAV
format su ort, and now u to 12 different sound banks, blaster blocking, force ush
effects and more!
Warning: You’ve just acquired an electronic board containing parts
sensitive to ESD. Final iring & assembly is under the responsibility of the
user ith the appropriate tools and ESD protection.
If you’re not familiar ith ESD, please visit :
http://en. ikipedia.org/ iki/Electrostatic_discharge
Plecter Labs can not be held responsible for improper use or assembly of
the Crystal Focus board.
High-Po er LEDs (aka Luxeon™)
DIY illuminated sabers have suffered for too long from the lack of a terrific and
im ressive blade retraction/ignition effect. EL wire technology did not allow this effect
since it fades in and out in a homogeneous way all along its length, because of the
hos hor com osing the wire coating. MR/Hasbro Fx sabers found a workaround by
using a 64 LED stri on a flexible PCB which makes the retraction effect by switching
the LEDs by grou of 8 but this setu remains very fragile.
The high- ower LED technology allows a realistic ignition/retraction effect of the blade
while kee ing it almost em ty and therefore not fragile when hit.
To achieve this effect, the high- ower LED current must be driven very accurately.
Guided by the s ecial film, the light “climbs” rogressively along the olycarbonate
tubing and roduces the desired effect.
Moreover, our SMPS high- ower LED driver has the key feature of heating much less
com ared to other systems, and is really different from the use of a sim le resistor or
voltage cho ing drivers to ower the LED. The driver also maintains the brightness of
the blade whenever the batteries become de leted, which is im ossible to obtain with
a resistor.
An additional feature of the luxeon driving section is the configurable generation of a
flickering effect of the blade brightness. It’s a random alteration of the light roduced
by the high- ower LED suggesting energy variations for a more realistic result which is
retty close to the sabers seen in the movies. The effect is not a constant ulse but is
more like a “candle effect”. We also added a core ulse effect that can be combined

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and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
6
with the flickering, roviding interesting behaviors of the high- ower LED for non
conventional or non-saber related ro s like an Electric Staff or a Light Whi .
The Plecter Labs high- ower LED driver embedded on the Crystal Focus Board can
now drive u to 3A and works with any high ower LED featuring a forward voltage
(Vf) lower or equal to 10V. Luxeon, Rebel, Seoul, Prolight, Cree and Ledengin branded
LEDs have been tested successfully. Please note that as we’re writing this manual, we
cannot guarantee the use with ANY kind of high- ower LEDs a earing in the market
in the future.
Warning : High-po er LEDs (such as the Luxeon brand LED, hich is
mentioned in this document) are extremely bright . They are considered
"class 2 lasers"! You should neither look directly to the beam nor point
someone ith it hen the blade is not attached to the hilt, just like a
po erful lamp or flashlight. Plecter Labs could not be held responsible for
any bad use of high-po er LEDs.
To avoid injuries and retina damage due to the high brightness of those
high-po er LEDs, simple “emitter plugs” can be built using a piece of blade
tubing ended ith some decorative greeblies.
Sound section
The Plecter Labs sound board is unique. It has been develo ed with the ur ose of
im roving the quality of DIY sabers’ sound FX in a significant way. For too many
years, sound modules were obtained from sacrificed toys and remained low quality.
Master Re lica 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 im ossible to adjust in term of sensitivity or sound contents.
We have monitored several attem ts for building an embedded sound module laying
custom & changeable sounds, often based on chi corders. Using bulky arts, those
were often unreliable and hard to fit in a hilt. Not to add those chi corders were
designed for digital answering machines, and therefore feature a bad restitution
quality (voice sam le rate).
Plecter Labs decided to rocess the internal motion sensors and the sound generation
on the same board which requires some non-volatile memory. Second, we needed a
sim le way to u load or download sound
contents or configuration of the saber
through a sim le and standard way.
To avoid any lugging roblem with a small
connector and an easy-to-lose cable, we
o ted for a high-end flash memory card in
the SD format (now microSD).
Inserted in a USB card reader like 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 iece of
software.

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Disney or Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light
and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
7
Features & Maximum Ratings
-Dimensions: 53x23.5x7.5 mm (with the microSD card).
-Power su ly: 5.5 to 11 V / 3.5A (with the High- ower LED). 2 li-ion cells
(18650 or 14500) batteries recommended.
-Idle current consum tion : 10 mA (dee slee mode)
-S eaker: 4 to 8 ohm.
-Audio out ut Power : 2W
-Accent LEDs : 8
-Accent LEDs ad current source : 18 mA max er ad
-On-board PLI
-Blade mirroring accent LEDs
-Handles momentary or latching for blade activation
-U to 12 selectable sound banks via audio menu
-Blaster Blocking, Force, Force Clash™ and Locku Fx
-StabFx™, S inFx™ & ComboFx™
-Blade Flickering & Core ulse Fx
-Blade Shimmering on Clash
-Blaster Sounds
-U to 4 boot sounds
-U to 16 swing and 16 clash sounds
-Flash on Clash™ (FoC™)
-Anti Power On / Off technology (A-POP™)
-Blaster Move™
-Power on Force™
-Hilt Angle Ignition Sound Selection
-Mute-on-The-Boot™
-Alternate Power Off sounds (motion vs no motion)
-Configurable Idle mode & ower saving timer
-Wake-u on motion with WakeOnMove™
-Motion-triggered Ignition
-32 stage accent LED sequencer
-Crystal Chamber s ecials
-WAV file su ort
-True 16 bit, 22.050 kSam les/sec crystal clear DAC
- iSaber Audio Player, u to 99 WAV tracks, lay/ ause/shuffle
-SD card su ort: u to 16GB, FAT16 or FAT32. Sandisk brand referred.
-FlexiBlend™ owered Color Mixing on 4 channels using the satellite board
-Configurable normal blade, FoC & Locku colors
-Real Time Configuration Editor (R.I.C.E.™)

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Disney or Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light
and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
8
Placement & Installation
Ideally, the module is laced in the hilt so that:
-the motion sensor is at 1” or more from the s inning center of the hilt
-the SD card remains easily accessible.
Usually the ommel area is a good choice, however hilts made of 2 halves can have
the board installed in the to side of the saber.
Securing the board can be done using double sided foam ta e or a velcro stra .
With this new version, along with Motion Fusion™, board lacement in the hilt is less
critical. Smart lacement remains im ortant though, to guarantee a ro er SD card
access.
Rechargeable battery ack
Motion sensor
µSD Card
Hilt
Foam Ta e
Pommel
Hand

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and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
9
Tools and Parts required to install/operate the module
-an ESD safe soldering station & soldering wire (60/40, 1mm OD or eq.)
-liers (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 ort (canon 2.1mm socket)
-a ro riate Battery charger
-a USB SD card reader acce ting micro SD card or a regular SD card reader with
a micro to regular SD card ada ter.
-a com uter
-a digital audio editor software handling WAV files if you wish to create your
own sound fonts (audacity, for instance).
Ho does it ork?
The two main effects of the saber is the roduction of a sound when the blade is
cutting the air (swing, roducing a sort of Do ler effect) and the im act between two
blades (clash). The motion sensor we use is ca able of detecting rotation movement
and shocks. The main difficulty is to make the ro er difference between the two
classes of movements. The sensor is digitized by a microcontroller, then analyzed in
real-time and com ared to a modelization of clash and swing gestures using low
latency DSP techniques (now down to 6 ms).
The algorithm has many trimming arameters 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 setu allows
the ability to change the sensitivity of the swing and the clash, de ending on
whether the user wants a really verbose saber, or casual sound FX. As the different
versions evolved we im roved our gesture recognition algorithms which now have
semi automated arameterization, the user selecting only basic thresholds and the
general sensitivity. Moreover, default settings usually suit most users.
The s ing 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 setu is located on the SD card which also stores the sounds. A
configuration text file is editable with a sim le text editor such a windows note ad.

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and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
10
SD card contents, Sound Banks and Slots
Sounds are stored in the WAV format (16 bits, 22050 sam les er second).
[The reviously used RAW format is no longer su orted since CFv5]
WAV sound files must comply ith the format above or they ill be skipped
during the boot, leading to sound gaps or board failure.
Crystal Focus Version has 12 sound banks. This allows storing different “styles” in the
same saber. Each sound bank is stored on the SD card in the sub-directories (or
folders) bank1 to bank12. 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:
a sound announcing the bank selection menu (menu.wav)
a background sound for the menu (menubgnd.wav)
In addition, we are aiming to “skin” the sound board, therefore the root directory also
contains extra sound files layed during interaction with the user, during the reboot
rocess (beep.wav) or rovide an audio diagnostic of an action (saving the current
configuration with the R.I.C.E. editor) with ok.wav and cancel.wav.
Important change ith CFv7:
The bank selection menu now mixes in real-time the menu background track with the
font descri tion file which is now stored in each bank directory, as font.wav.
The sounds layed by the saber are stored into (u to) 12 sub-directories or folders.
During the selection of the sound bank (see further in this document), the latter is
identified with a descri tive sound (font.wav) which can of course be customized.
The user can record their own voice and describe the contents of the sound font/bank
from the sim lest manner like saying “bank one” to something really descri tive like
“dark side font”, or by naming the wea on, the character or the font theme.
Each sound bank has 61 sound slots s lit as below:
a font/bank descri tion sound (font.wav)
u to 4 boot sounds (boot[2-4].wav)
4 ower on sounds (poweron.wav to poweron4.wav)
Power on Force (poweronf.wav)
2 ower off sounds (poweroff.wav and pwroff2.wav)
continuous humming (hum.wav)
u to 16 clash sounds (clash1.wav to clash16.wav)
u to 16 swing sounds (swing1.wav to swing16.wav)
4 blaster blocking sounds (blaster.wav to blaster4.wav)
1 blade locku sound (lockup.wav)
2 force effect sounds (force.wav and force2.wav)
u to 4 s in sounds (spin1.wav to spin4.wav)
u to 4 stab sounds (stab1.wav to stab4.wav)
u to 4 combo sounds (combo1.wav to combo4.wav)

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Disney or Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light
and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
11
Optional sounds
Many of the sounds above have a scalable number or can be o tional. For instance,
it’s recommended to have at least one boot sound, even if it contains only a few 100
ms of silence if you don’t want to hear it.
However, we have added new (o tional) sound slots for in this version of CF.
Pre- ower on sounds (preon1 to 4.wav). Those sounds will be chosen
randomly rior to the ignition ower-on sounds. It allows the ability to add any
ty e of sound (unmixed) rior to owering on the blade. It can be an iconic /
character sound if that matches the saber “theme” or it can be a mechanical
sound highlighting the activation switch, if the sounds are resent in the font.
To disable the feature, sim ly remove the sounds from the sound bank.
Post- ower off sounds (pstoff1 to 4.wav). Same as above, but layed at
the end of the ower off sound. Essentially these are there to add a quote after
having the saber turned off. While it can be sim ly tailed to the ower off
sound, having it se arated rovides more flexibility.
When the ower su ly voltage is a lied to the board, it “boots” and lays a little
logo sound to notify the user, just like a digital camera. This little logo makes sure the
Crystal Focus Saber Core started ro erly and it gives a s ecial 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 bee is layed instead. If you don’t
want any sound when owering the module, create a WAV sound file with 100 ms of
silence. If several boot sounds are resent in the sound font, one will be selected
randomly in the available array of sounds.
The im ortant sounds must be all there on the SD card and be named ro erly
(lower case) to have the module o erating ro erly. Same thing for the configuration
files (.txt). In case of file loss, the original ackage of sounds and configuration file
are available from Plecter Labs website in the download section. We advise the user to
kee all its sound and configuration files in s ecific folders on the hard disk on the
com uter so that changing the saber’s contents remains easy. Use some ex licit
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].
User’s Notes

Plecter Labs is in no way affiliated, associated, licensed or endorsed by Disney or Lucasfilm Ltd., Industrial Light
and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
12
Board Overvie
Getting Started ith Crystal Focus
The board has been designed so that the user can enjoy an “out of the box”
ex erience. The default ackage of the SD card contains 12 sound banks with ready
made configuration files and accent led sequence files.
The switch arameter is set to 1 by default, which corres onds to a normally
closed (NC) latching s itch. This way, the user doesn’t need to hook u a switch
to the board, the o en contact on the activation ad tells the boards to start just after
ower u , allowing the user to test the board with a minimal soldering job of 6
connections: ower su ly, s eaker, high- ower LED.
Further install of the board in the hilt and customization of the CF board will require
the user to change the arameters in the configuration files. Kee in mind that,
es ecially if this is your first CF, and due to the high configurability of the board, you’ll
s end quite some time on adjusting the arameters to reach the desired look & feel.
The SD card slot should remain accessible during this rocess and ossibly once the
saber is com leted too.
Wiring and Operating the Module
The board must be owered with an a ro riate battery ack. We highly recommend
the use of good quality li-ion battery acks made of 14500 or 18650 cells and
including protection PCBs. The AW and Panasonic brands make su erior quality
batteries while the Ultrafire brand remains a cost effective solution.
Unless you have a convenient way to o en the hilt and access the inside of the saber
(Graflex base for instance), we strongly recommend the use of a directly connected
battery ack (with a “recharge ort”) vs. removable cells. Moreover, for dueling
High
-
Power
LED Pads
S eaker Pads
Motion Sensor MCU
Accent LED
Pads
Aux. Switch Ignition Switch
Power Su ly
Pads
µSD

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and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
13
sabers, directly wired battery acks have more reliable connections com ared to
s ring action battery holders.
A 2-cell li-ion will rovide a nominal voltage of 7.4V to the board. The board isn’t
com atible with a 3-cell solution without some modifications of the electronics.
Ni-MH battery acks are sim ly not recommended since they have a bigger energy
storage/volume ratio and the cost of li-ion cells isn’t an issue anymore.
General Po er S itch & Recharge Port
Des ite that the CF board has a very low idle current use when the blade is off and
board is in dee slee mode, long term storage of the hilt on a shelf or dis lay case
requires the electronics to be fully shut off. To avoid the use of an additional general
ower switch, we use the recharge ort for that very ur ose. 2.1mm or 1.3mm
“Canon” sockets are o ular choices. Two of those ins are connected internally when
nothing is inserted in the socket. Contact is disru ted when a lug is inserted.
Along the years, the “kill key” technique has been develo ed: a fake lastic lug is
decorated to look like an actual art of the hilt. When inserted, it cuts the ower
su ly to the board in the recharge ort. Of course, the ort recharges the internal
battery ack when an actual charger lug is inserted.
Below, an exam le of a decorative kill key (July 2010)
The Kill Key must be made out of a non-conductive material (PVC, Nylon, Delrin etc).
Here’s the usual wiring of the recharge ort. Please note that not all recharge orts
have the exact same inout. User must understand the rinci le of wiring a recharge
ort and must be able to identify the different ins of a socket.
The idea is fairly sim le: the ositive of the battery ack goes to the recharge ort
central in (referred as tip) and then to the ositive of the board. It’s not affected by
the kill key. The negative of the battery ack goes to the in of the recharge ort that
is connected to the outer sleeve of the socket. The last in, referred as s itched
negative pin goes to the negative of the board.

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and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
Owners.
14
When nothing is inserted in the ort, the negative of the battery ack is internally
connected to the switched negative tab, hence owering the board. When a Kill Key is
inserted in the ort, the negative of the board is no longer connected to the negative
of the battery ack: the board is fully owered down. When a charger lug is inserted
in the recharge ort, the charging voltage is reaching both leads of the battery ack
while the negative of the board is still unconnected from the circuit, reventing
damages to the electronics and ensuring only the battery ack is connected to the
charger for ro er charge.
In the revious icture the green-black drawn switched doesn’t need to be wired er
say, it only illustrates the recharge socket internal switch.
General iring
The board doesn’t need many connections for basic o eration. Aside from the
recharge ort / ower su ly detailed above, only a air of switches, the high ower
LED and the s eaker are required to be soldered to get 80% of the features the CF
board ro oses.

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15
User’s Notes

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and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
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16
Animated Accent LEDs
There are many ways to “ im ” your saber hilt using additional small LEDs further
referred in this document as Accent LEDs.
Crystal Focus features a 32 stage sequencer that allows the user to setu a blinking
animated sequence for u to 8 LEDs. The board out uts 3.3V / 18mA max er accent
LED ad. User must ensure the used accent LEDs have a forward voltage (Vf) lower or
equal to 3.3V.
As a s ace saver CF embeds the foot rints for SMT resistors. The foot rint is made for
0402 resistors like Farnell reference # 1357998 (22 ohm value rovided as an
exam le, user must do the math for the actually used accent LEDs – see below). 0603
resistors will also fit and are easier to solder.
To install those resistors on the board, re-tin one ad only, then grab the resistor
with a air of shar tweezers, slide it against the re-tinned ad, heat u the joint,
wait for it to cool down, then solder the other side of the resistor.
If the user refers to use classic resistor with leads, the SMT foot rint must be
bridged: tin both ads first then add a bit of solder while the soldering iron ti is right
in the middle of the ads. Some stri ed wra ing wire or one strand of wire can also
be used to achieve the bridged connection. Another solution is to use 0 ohm stra s in
0402 or 0603 ackage.
On the icture above, the red arrows oint to the ositive ads of the accent leds, use
small gauge wire to send those signals to the ositive of the LEDs. Flat/Ribbon cable
can be very handy for that ur ose. Then all negatives of the LEDs return to a single
ad ointed by the blue arrow (ground return). The main negative of the board can
be also used as the accent led ground return.
Calculating resistors for LEDs
R = (Vsu ly – Vled) / LedCurrent

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17
In our case, Vsu ly is the voltage the board rovides to ower the accent LEDs, ie
3.3V. The Vled is the forward voltage of the LED, usually referred as Vf in the
datasheet. The led current has to be decided by the user, de ending on the
brightness and the maximum rating of the used LED. 5 to15 mA are fairly common for
most accent LEDs.
As an exam le, let’s consider a 1.6 volt LED (red) at 10 mA
R = (3.3 – 1.6) / 0.01 = 170 ohm ( 150 ohm in the classic E12 resistor series)
Be sure not to drive too much current in the LED (18 mA max). If you wish a good
brightness with a low current, use high efficiency LED (generally coming in a
trans arent “crystal” casing).
Please see further in this document for the sequencing of the accent LEDs.

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18
Configuration Files
There are 2 different ty es of configuration files. One is the config.txt
configuration file which is stored in the sound bank folder and contains font
de endant arameters such as blade color, flash on clash color and timing, flicker
effect. Another configuration file is named override.txt which is located in the root
directory of the card and stores arameters defining the behavior of the saber in
general (slee mode, switch setu , motion sensing arameters).
That version better se arates both ty es of arameters, some of them having really
no meaning in the font context but only in the hilt context. However, the user can
always decide to have hilt arameters moved to the config.txt of each font to
have them defined er font. A good exam le is the slee arameter, which one might
like to have short to enter slee mode quickly in font A but also want it rather long in
font B to enjoy the idle mode accent LED sequence.
Conversely, a font arameter can be moved to the override.txt file which is the
rimary and former use of that configuration file. Any arameter resent in that file
(even if also defined in the config.txt) will be overridden.
Both are sim le text files which can be edited with windows note ad.
Parameters must all be resent in the configuration files otherwise, the module will
use default arameters for the missing arameters.
The text files acce t comments on a stand alone line (not mixed with a arameter
line). The comment symbol is the C language double slash ‘//’ as the very first
characters of the line.
CF now also has another style of comments using the Emacs scri t syntax '##'.
To "comment" has 2 kinds of use. One is to disable a line like in the exam le below:
## switch=2
switch=1
The other use is to leave a comment or a note to remember something about the
configuration or the soundbank, like in this exam le.
## beware, current should not exceed 750 mA
led1=700
the double slash '//' comment is now reserved as the single comment ex orted to the
Real Time Configuration Editor (R.I.C.E.™). Use the // comment to name the
configuration to reflect its "theme" like:
// Bank1 - Novastar sound font
Certain arameters are integers, others are floating oint numbers. Format must be
res ected: even for a round value like ‘1’ for a floating oint arameter, ‘1.0’ has to be
entered.
To modify the file, insert the SD card in the USB card reader, and then browse the
contents with windows file ex lorer (on E: for instance). Double-click on file

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19
config.txt: the note ad o ens. You can directly save the file on the SD card. Once
the configuration is over, sim ly remove the card from the reader after having it
“ejected” (right click on the reader device in windows ex lorer, contextual menu,
eject). Put the card back in the saber and test your new setu !
Make sure you have no space characters at the beginning of the line, or
bet een the ‘=’ sign and the value of a parameter.
The preferences file
Since CF v4, another file named refs.txt is used and stored in the root directory of
the SD card. It stores the latest soundbank used and also now defines the maximum
currents of each color channel to avoid damaging the LED. See further in this
document for more details about LED current maximum settings.

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and Magic or any of their associates.All brands and trademarks listed are the exclusive ro erty of their res ective
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20
Parameters and fine tuning the saber
The configuration file includes a set of arameters dedicated to the sound section of
the controller and the gestural / motion detection (both being linked). A second set of
arameters handles the behavior of the high- ower LED. Some arameters influence
both categories, since visual and sound effects are in tight relationshi intrinsically. All
arameters are lowercase.
Certain parameters involve time / duration / delay. We tried to normalize
those parameters to a single unit: a multiple of 2ms. Unless other ise
indicated, that’s hat is used to define those timing parameters and it
matches the internal clock of CF. As an example, such a parameter set to
500 is equivalent to 1000 ms or 1 second.
Motion & Gesture detection parameters:
Motion recognition is rocessed using com lex low latency DSP algorithms; however,
most of the arameters used for those are internally com uted so the user only has to
setu a few thresholds as high-level arameters.
CF has 4 motion classes: swing, clash, stab and s in. Each class is defined by a
s ecific threshold (hswing, hclash, hstab and hs in) above which the associated sound
is triggered. Most thresholds are defined between 0 and 1023 for a maximized
accuracy in the motion calculation and for an im roved resolution in the motion
settings.
Finally, there’s a motion gate arameter to define the minimum quantity of motion
required to activate the motion engine. This value isn’t critical but can be adjusted in
the case of excess of vibrations due to the roximity of s eaker or rumbling motor.
gate [0-200]: minimum motion quantity required to start the motion
recognition engine. Base value between 15 to 50 works fine (default: 20)
hswing [0-1023]: swing threshold (120).
hclash [0-1023]: clash threshold (550).
hstab [0-1023]: stab threshold (80-200).
hspin [0-32000]: s in threshold (200-1000).
Gesture types
A swing gesture is a rotation of the hilt. A clash is a general ur ose shock occurring
on the blade (or the hilt). A s in detection is engaged after the hilt has gone in
continuous rotation long enough (above, hspin). A stab a horizontal thrust of the hilt
ending with a shock.