Plecter Labs Nano Biscotte v2.0 User manual

Nano Biscotte (a.k.a. NB) v2.0
Entry Range Illuminated Saber Sound Board - User’s manual
© Erv’ - Plecter Labs – v 1 01 – February 2014
erv@plecterlabs com
http://www plecterlabs com
"Size does matter Small is beautiful and comes in nice packages"
"This thing actually fits into a 1inch blade !"
We spent a lot of time writing this manual to ensure all the important
information is provided for proper use of that board. If ou are new to
saber building, to the use of Plecter Labs boards, or simpl to electronics in
general, we highl recommend ou print a cop of that document and keep
it with ou during the whole process of installing NB in our hilt.
Modification, copies or distribution of that document is strictly prohibited
© Plecter Labs / Erv’ Plecter 2005-2014

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 property of their respective
Owners
1
Table of contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1
INTRODUCTION--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2
SOUND SECTION--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2
NANO BISCOTTE FEATURES & MAXIMUM RATINGS-----------------------------------------------------------4
TOOLS AND PARTS REQUIRED TO INSTALL/OPERATE THE MODULE ---------------------------------- 4
SD CARD CONTENTS, SOUND BANKS AND SLOTS----------------------------------------------------------------5
BOARD OVERVIEW ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6
U SER ’ S N OTES ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6
WIRING AND OPERATING THE MODULE --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7
GENERAL POWER SWITCH & RECHARGE PORT----------------------------------------------------------------- 7
GENERAL WIRING ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9
U SUAL W IRING USING A 18650 LI - ION CELL -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------9
U SER ’ S N OTES ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------9
A LTERNATE WIRING USING 4 X AA N I -MH BATTERIES OR ALKALINES --------------------------------------------------- 10
HIGH POWER LED RESISTOR CALCULATIONS------------------------------------------------------------------11
S TUNT U PGRADE ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11
R ESISTOR CALCULATION -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11
W ATTAGE CALCULATION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11
R ESISTOR BARGAIN -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12
POWER INDICATOR --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------12
P OWER I NDICATOR W IRING ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12
P OWER I NDICATOR R ESISTOR -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13
P OWER I NDICATOR W IRING ( OFF DURING DEEP SLEEP ) -------------------------------------------------------------------- 13
ADVANCED WIRING USING FLASH ON CLASH AND TRI-REBEL ------------------------------------------14
BOARD µSD CARD CONFIGURATION --------------------------------------------------------------------------------15
C ONFIGURATION F ILE ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15
P ARAMETERS AND FINE TUNING THE SABER --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15
Motion & Gesture detection parameters :-----------------------------------------------------------------------------16
Gesture flows & priorities : ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------16
Sound / Interaction Parameters-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------18
High-power LED parameters :------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------19
Clashes & Swings Selection Modes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------19
INSTALLING A SOUND FONT ON THE SD CARD------------------------------------------------------------------20
DRIVE (AND FDRIVE) ADJUSTMENTS--------------------------------------------------------------------------------21
DEEP SLEEP MODE ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------21
TROUBLESHOOTING & FAQ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------22

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 property of their respective
Owners
2
Introduction
The Nano Biscotte is another little brother of our Crystal Focus Board It keeps the
same spirit while using some more modest parts, making it a perfect entry range
sound fx board It was designed as the perfect match to upgrade stunt sabers at low
cost Its small size allows also to install it in the smallest hilts The Nano Biscotte is
actually so small that it fits inside a 1" blade !
Warning : You’ve just acquired an electronic board containing parts
sensitive to ESD. Final wiring & assembl is under responsibilit of the user
with the appropriate tools and ESD protection.
If ou’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 assembl of
the Nano Biscotte board.
Warning : High-power LEDs (such as the Luxeon brand LED, which is
mentioned in this document) are extremel bright . The are considered
"class 2 lasers"! You should neither look directl at the beam nor point
someone with it when the blade is not attached to the hilt, just like a
powerfull lamp or flashlight. Plecter Labs could not be held responsible for
an bad use of high-power LEDs.
To avoid injuries and retina damage due to the high brightness of high-
power LEDs, simple “emitter plugs” can be built using a piece of blade
tubing finished with some decorative greeblies.
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 For 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 We also needed a simple way

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 property of their respective
Owners
3
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 Installing a Nano Biscotte sound
font on the card takes about 1 5 second (10 seconds including the formatting of the
card)

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 property of their respective
Owners
4
Nano Biscotte Features & Maximum Ratings
-Dimensions : 28 5 x 18 5 x 5 mm
-Power supply : 3 4 to 5 5v / 2A (with the High-power LED) SINGLE li-ion cells
(18650 or 14500) or 4xAA rechargeable NiMH batteries recommended
-Idle current consumption : < 0 1 mA (deep sleep mode)
-7+ months of shelf time with a fully charged 18650 li-ion cell
-2A high-power LED direct drive (no current regulator)
-Speaker: 4 to 8 ohm
-Audio output Power : 2W max
-Exported 3 3V pad
-No Accent LED
-Flash on Clash™ output pad
-Handles only momentary switches for blade activation
-Blade Flickering Fx
-Blade Shimmering on Clash
-Anti Power Off technology (A-POP™)
-WAV file support
-10 bit, 22 050 ksample/sec audio
-2 sound banks
-SD card support: up to 16GB, FAT16 or FAT32 (beta) Sandisk brands
preferred
Tools and Parts required to install/operate the module
-an ESD safe soldering station & soldering wire (60/40, 1mm OD or eq )
-pliers (flat and cutting)
-a Digital Multimeter / DMM (strongly advised, so useful)
-a momentary switch for the blade ignition
-wire & heat shrink (we suggest to use flexible stranded 28 AWG wire, not
bigger)
-An external power resistor to limit the LED current
-rechargeable batteries
-recharge port like canon 2 1mm socket (optional)
-A power extender (PEx) to operate flash on clash (optional)
-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

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 property of their respective
Owners
5
SD card contents, Sound Banks and Slots
Sounds are stored in the WAV format (16 bits, 22050 samples per second) Despite
the fact that the module uses a 10 bit sound output, we kept the 16 bit format of the
sound font, therefore ensuring immediate compatibility with CF sound fonts
WAV sound files must compl with the format above or the will be skipped
during the boot, leading to sound gaps or board failure.
Nano Biscotte has two sound banks, with all the files (including configuration files)
stored in the root directory of the SD card The sound content of a bank is called a
Sound Font
A sound bank has 20 sound slots split as below:
a boot sound (boot.wav)
a power on sound (poweron.wav)
a power off sound (poweroff.wav)
continuous humming (hum.wav)
8 clash sounds (clash1.wav to clash8.wav)
8 swing sounds (swing1.wav to swing8.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 Nano Biscotte 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 100 ms of silence
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)
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
(unlocked board) 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]
The Nano Biscotte is 100% compatible with both Crystal Focus and Petit Crouton
sound fonts Extra sound files from those boards are simply ignored during the board
booting operation

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 property of their respective
Owners
6
Board Overview
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 property of their respective
Owners
7
Wiring and Operating the Module
The board must be powered with an appropriate battery pack We highly recommend
the use of good quality li-ion batter packs made of a single 14500 or 18650 cell
and including protection PCBs The AW brand makes superior quality batteries
while the Ultrafire/Trustfire remains a cost effective solution
The Nano Biscotte has been highly optimized so that both a wired battery pack and
removable cells could be used with the board The minimal current used in deep sleep
mode allows the saber to stay unused on the shelf for 7 months with a fully charged
18650 Of course, the use of the recharge port and the kill key is possible too !
Ni-MH battery packs are simply not recommended since they have a bigger energy
storage/volume ratio and cost of li-ion cells isn’t an issue anymore However, many
stunt sabers were made with 3x or 4xAA NiMH rechargeable cells and the Nano
Biscotte board can be powered with such pack, leading to minimal modification of the
upgraded stunt saber
When power is applied to the board, it will play the boot.wav sound To start the
sound board, simply press the activation switch The poweron.wav sound will be
played and the high-power LED will ramp up in brightness in synchronization with the
sound From there the sound board will play the hum.wav sound in loop, interrupted
by motion fx sounds To stop the sound board, press the activation switch again
(eventually for a certain time, if the power off delay A-POP feature is used) The
poweroff.wav sound will be then played
After a configurable duration (refer to the configuration section of this manual) the
board will move into deep sleep mode Pressing then the activation switch will make
the saber booting again with the boot.wav sound to get it out of the sleep mode
Another press on the activation switch will ignite the blade
General Power Switch & Recharge Port
Despite the NB board has a very low idle current use (< 0 1 mA) when it enters deep
sleep mode, the user might prefer a battery solution for which he doesn't have to
remove the cell
A pin 2 1 mm “Canon” socket is a popular choice
Two of those pins are connected when nothing is
inserted in the socket Contact is disrupted when a
plug is inserted
Along the years, the “kill key” technique has been
developed: a fake plastic plug is decorated to look
like an actual part of the hilt When inserted, it cuts
the power supply to the board in the recharge port
Of course, the port recharges the internal battery
pack when an actual charger plug is inserted

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 property of their respective
Owners
8
The Kill Key must be made out of a non-conductive material (PVC, Nylon etc) The left
picture above shows a kill key made out of a sacrificed male plug (metal) but it’s
provided only as a reference picture and plastic should be used as a rule of the thumb
Here’s the usual wiring of the recharge port Please note that not all recharge ports
have the exact same pinout User must understand the principle of wiring a recharge
port and must be able to identify the different pins of a socket
The idea is fairly simple: the positive of the battery pack goes to the recharge port
central pin (referred as tip) and to the positive of the board It’s not affected by the
kill key The negative of the battery pack goes to the pin of the recharge port that is
connected to the outer sleeve of the socket The last pin, referred as switched
negative pin and goes to the negative of the board
When nothing is inserted in the port, the negative of the battery pack is internally
connected to the switched negative tab, hence powering the board When a Kill Key is
inserted in the port, the negative of the board is no longer connected to the negative
of the battery pack: the board is fully powered down When a charger plug is inserted
in the recharge port, the charging voltage is reaching both leads of the battery pack
while the negative of the board is still unconnected from the circuit, preventing
damages to the electronics and ensuring only the battery pack is connected to the
charger for proper charge
In the previous picture the green-black drawn switched doesn’t need to be wired per
say, it only illustrates the recharge socket internal switch

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 property of their respective
Owners
9
General wiring
Usual Wiring using a 18650 li-ion cell
The board doesn’t need many connections to be operated Aside from the recharge
port / power supply detailed above (optional), only a switch, the high power LED
negative and the speaker are required to be soldered to get all the features the Nano
Biscotte board proposes
The Nano Biscotte wiring is compatible with 2 54 mm headers meant to accept a
wiring harness or individual pairs of female headers for the power supply, the
activation switch and the speaker, which allows the wiring to be versatile and scalable
The board doesn't use a current regulator to drive the high-power LED, therefore
current limitation must occur outside of the board, like on regular stunt wiring, using a
power resistor The positive of the LED goes to the power resistor and to the positive
of the battery, the LED negative goes to the L- pad of the board
User’s Notes