DIYino - an Arduino compatible board for prop electronics

This is awesome Protonerd! I've been looking at a way to build my own arduino lightsaber for some years now and I thought I had it all figured out. I had planned on using an arduino nano, a MPU6050, and a Mini DFplayer. Thanks to you, now I can get all of this is one! I do have a couple questions though. To change blade colors in a smooth transition, I had planned on reading the value of a potentiometer with an analog pin. I went through your Stardust User Manual, and I was wondering if this would be possible with the stardust? I did not see any Analog Input pins, but was wondering if I could use the SDA or the SCL pins? If anyone could help me out I would appreciate it. Thanks!

The Stardust has one analog input pin as auxiliary pin, i.e. it's not situated at the board peripherie but with a smaller thru hole in the middle of the board. But you can use it. SDA and SCL on the other hand cannot be used for anything else than I2C, as they are also connected to the MPU. I break them out because for some applications you might want to use a small OLED display which also work with I2C.

As to your idea to change color smoothly with a potentiometer, did you look at my video showing the Gravity Color Mix feature? Would that be sufficient for color mixing or do you have something else in mind?

Hi Protonerd!

Just sent a payment for one of your Startburst LS boards.

There are still Stardust boards available, both for blasters and for lightsabers.

To recognize that most of the guys buying my boards are from the US I decided to update the pricing to reflect this.
Therefore starting from now buyers from US will get the Startdust board for $54 (instead of 54 EUR). Shipping is $6.

All other conditions remain the same.

This may be already answered, but they come with the LOS code already loaded?

I just read the manual, I see that it is not but has all the links etc.. I think if there is stock available I may order two of these in the next week.

Stock is still available.

I even have a promotion until the new movie comes out for US costumers, same price as before but in $ and not in EUR. Make use of it, special price is only for limited time and volume.

As to including code on the boards: in fact I'm contemplating it now. I will probably offer pre-loaded boards (free fonts and FX-SaberOS) in future if I get demand for it. Price tag estimate is +15EUR. Of course pre-loaded boards can still be updated with newer code versions, but users can quick-start with them if under time pressure to make a prop.

I got my boards and did the initial test. Should I use lightsaber-osgravity blend or fxsabers-os? rgb star led, single button is my current intention.

Soulbp:
I got my boards and did the initial test. Should I use lightsaber-osgravity blend or fxsabers-os? rgb star led, single button is my current intention.

Go for FX-SaberOS from now on.

Proto, I'm having a bit of an issue. I have my two boards. By connecting the 5V and Bat+ pins I am able to get one of them flashed with the software, but unable to get to the point where I can transfer files to it. I've tried all of the options in the manual to no avail. The other board, I cannot even get to the flashing point. The red led comes on and stays on, and will not get assigned a COM port. Any help? Thanks!

jesjhoward:
Proto, I'm having a bit of an issue. I have my two boards. By connecting the 5V and Bat+ pins I am able to get one of them flashed with the software, but unable to get to the point where I can transfer files to it. I've tried all of the options in the manual to no avail. The other board, I cannot even get to the flashing point. The red led comes on and stays on, and will not get assigned a COM port. Any help? Thanks!

I do extensive testing of the boards before they got delivered to customers. At the time of the delivery I can vouch for them. But as with all electronic boards, they are delicate items to be handled with care.

I started to give people advice to only try one of their boards at a time if they ordered multiple ones, and get in touch with me if it does not work before experimenting with the others. Reason is simple: I had multiple cases of users bricking all their boards in a matter of a few minutes, making the same mistake on all of them before getting in contact with me.

Please send me pictures of your boards as PN.
I can just hope that your boards are still not bricked. The one which you could flash, what do you mean you cannot transfer files? Did you wire up the USB breakout board or did you short the USb signals on-board?
As for the 2nd board, did you try to connect the USB via the on-board USB port or via the breakout? As I mention in the User Manual, micro-USB ports are not as mechanically robust as mini-USB ports, therefore you have to plug in the USB cable carefully. Ramming in the port can easily dislocate the port, rendering it useless or even shorting signals. Just some ideas to start with.

Sorry it's taken a while to get back with you, Proto. I did some more reading of your manual and have had some success. The board that I could program is fully working now and I have it in a saber! Woo! The second one did eventually get recognized by the computer, but it's hit and miss. Usually it behaves as I described, but every once in a while it will fire up. I think there's still hope for it, but I'll mess with it more after the holidays. Thanks again for the response and the awesome work you've done. I do have one question tho: Once the board goes into the sleep mode, is there any way of waking it using the activation button? I've been just pulling the battery to reset the board to get it to wake up. I suppose I could wire in a button on the reset pin. Let me know. Thanks!

A quick question, if I use the usb breakout do I need to short the wires for file upload? If the short is required to use usb flash what is the cleanest way recommended to do this? I'd rather not have to keep bridging and unbridging, I guess I could get a small switch that could be used.

jesjhoward:
Sorry it's taken a while to get back with you, Proto. I did some more reading of your manual and have had some success. The board that I could program is fully working now and I have it in a saber! Woo! The second one did eventually get recognized by the computer, but it's hit and miss. Usually it behaves as I described, but every once in a while it will fire up. I think there's still hope for it, but I'll mess with it more after the holidays. Thanks again for the response and the awesome work you've done. I do have one question tho: Once the board goes into the sleep mode, is there any way of waking it using the activation button? I've been just pulling the battery to reset the board to get it to wake up. I suppose I could wire in a button on the reset pin. Let me know. Thanks!

Please let me know how you configured the code. I had a while ago some issues with waking up, but they disappeared, but I did not find any explanation why they suddenly stopped working. All the configs I use (mostly single button, neopixel or star LED) are working fine, I can wake the boards, but I cannot fully exclude that some more exotic configs will cause the problem again.
I definitely will think about a redundant way to wake up. I'm considering a periodic wake up to maybe light an LED shortly to signalize the board is still alove, and if during this short period the main switch is pressed, the board will also wake up. Something for the near future. It definitely has to work reliably, since the Stardust boards do not have a kill-key per se. Of course one can install a small switch between 5V and BAT+, but if it can be avoided it's better.

Soulbp:
A quick question, if I use the usb breakout do I need to short the wires for file upload? If the short is required to use usb flash what is the cleanest way recommended to do this? I'd rather not have to keep bridging and unbridging, I guess I could get a small switch that could be used.

If you want to access both FTDI and the SPI-Flash over the same USB port, you can do it by shorting the D+ to DU+ and D- to DU-. In this case both MP3 and FTDI chips will be connected to the USB port, so they will fight for the arbitration. To work around it, you can disable either one of them by cutting power to it with the PSF or PSM signals (see Manual) or in the code you can program the signals connected to PSF and PSF (I recall they are A2 and A3) to high to disable that module or low to enable it (pmos power switches).

If you need more explanation, let me know.

What if I'd prefer to break out to be for flash/charging and the on board for the rest.

Never mind I found this in the manual, thanks!

Hey there! I'm totally new to this whole world of DIY electronics and I'm super excited to build my first lightsaber! I've had a lot of positive feedback from my stream and YT viewers on this, and I had no idea there was such a big community for this stuff!
Admittedly I have only been researching building a lightsaber for the last 5 days, but I feel like I have some idea of how to go about it. The DIYino seems to be the way to go, since similar boards are quite expensive, and using many arduino components seems like a recipe for disaster introducing multiple points of failure for an amateur like me.

I have some experience with HEMA and was surprised to find that some sabers can be used for actual sparring. The ultraedge heavy duelling blade from UltraSabers looks like the right kind of blade for me, but I was wondering if the electronic components are designed to take that much punishment? I know you're not normally trying to strike the hilt, but with the sparring I do it's quite likely. I was planning on using some salvaged galvanised steel pipe with a leather wrap grip, and definitely a lot of padding on the inside.

Since it will likely take a beating, having less points of failure seems like a necessity. As far as I can tell, most of the images that Protonerd has uploaded on this thread are blocked from being shared outside of photobucket, and on photobucket's website itself the image is still unviewable to me for some reason, so I haven't been able to get a good closeup look at the prime or stardust boards. In either case, I may have put the cart before the horse by already having purchased the LED (single LED projected up the blade since the hilt will likely sit behind me as a prop when I stream). The LED I purchased was the SK6812, which seems to use a higher voltage than what a single Li-ion battery can output, and I can't tell if the stardust (looking far more appealing to me) can take the voltage of 2 batteries. Granted, I have almost no clue what I'm doing when it comes to all this, but would I even need 2 batteries? Would I need a buckpuck? (I have no idea what those do either)

Since I'm a PC tech guy rather than hobbyist, I'm well aware that type-c USB tends to be a lot more durable than microUSB, but it was good to see the earlier post about it as well. If I went with the stardust, I would be wanting to connect a short cable from the board to a type-c connector as the external plug. Is this even possible? (It's probably quite obvious to those who can see the board, but as I mentioned, I cannot view the images for whatever reason)

P.S Sorry everyone for the extremely long rant, I just wanted to get all of it out there at once. And to Protonerd - if I can get all this to work out, you may have quite a few extra orders coming in from my viewers :smiley:

MaskedNozza:
Hey there! I'm totally new to this whole world of DIY electronics and I'm super excited to build my first lightsaber! I've had a lot of positive feedback from my stream and YT viewers on this, and I had no idea there was such a big community for this stuff!
Admittedly I have only been researching building a lightsaber for the last 5 days, but I feel like I have some idea of how to go about it. The DIYino seems to be the way to go, since similar boards are quite expensive, and using many arduino components seems like a recipe for disaster introducing multiple points of failure for an amateur like me.

I have some experience with HEMA and was surprised to find that some sabers can be used for actual sparring. The ultraedge heavy duelling blade from UltraSabers looks like the right kind of blade for me, but I was wondering if the electronic components are designed to take that much punishment? I know you're not normally trying to strike the hilt, but with the sparring I do it's quite likely. I was planning on using some salvaged galvanised steel pipe with a leather wrap grip, and definitely a lot of padding on the inside.

Since it will likely take a beating, having less points of failure seems like a necessity. As far as I can tell, most of the images that Protonerd has uploaded on this thread are blocked from being shared outside of photobucket, and on photobucket's website itself the image is still unviewable to me for some reason, so I haven't been able to get a good closeup look at the prime or stardust boards. In either case, I may have put the cart before the horse by already having purchased the LED (single LED projected up the blade since the hilt will likely sit behind me as a prop when I stream). The LED I purchased was the SK6812, which seems to use a higher voltage than what a single Li-ion battery can output, and I can't tell if the stardust (looking far more appealing to me) can take the voltage of 2 batteries. Granted, I have almost no clue what I'm doing when it comes to all this, but would I even need 2 batteries? Would I need a buckpuck? (I have no idea what those do either)

Since I'm a PC tech guy rather than hobbyist, I'm well aware that type-c USB tends to be a lot more durable than microUSB, but it was good to see the earlier post about it as well. If I went with the stardust, I would be wanting to connect a short cable from the board to a type-c connector as the external plug. Is this even possible? (It's probably quite obvious to those who can see the board, but as I mentioned, I cannot view the images for whatever reason)

P.S Sorry everyone for the extremely long rant, I just wanted to get all of it out there at once. And to Protonerd - if I can get all this to work out, you may have quite a few extra orders coming in from my viewers :smiley:

Valid point all the way, I updated my first initial post and re-included the most recent and best pictures of my 2 boards (Prime and Stardust).

I currently have only a few last Stardust boards, but restock is on the way and I have grand plans for 2018!!!

As to some of the questions:

  • I know that neopixel datasheets spec 5V as supply for the pixels, but they will run fine off a 3.7V Li-Ion. No worries.
  • I also would prefer a mini-USB for charging, for next bacthes I will probably offer a mini-USB breakout for a few bucks. A micro-USB breakout is always included with a Stardust and you can wire either of them to the board to access it from a distance (i.e. in-hilt recharge).

Thanks for the pictures! Any reason why there are three different colours? I assume the functionality is the same.

Grand plans? I await with great anticipation!

If they run fine off a single 3.7V, that's great news! But I would love to have a lightsaber which can go long intervals before needing to charge. How long would you expect a single battery to last? Most likely I could be using the sabre for practice for a period of up to 2 hours. I'm happy to try cramming more cells in the chassis if it means longer runtime.

I did not mention mini-USB at all. As far as I know, mini-USB is a dead interface type. Having looked further into what 'breakout' means, USB-C is not feasible (seems to have upwards of 10 'pins') and I will probably use a breakout board for a micro-USB connector.

MaskedNozza:
Thanks for the pictures! Any reason why there are three different colours? I assume the functionality is the same.

Grand plans? I await with great anticipation!

If they run fine off a single 3.7V, that's great news! But I would love to have a lightsaber which can go long intervals before needing to charge. How long would you expect a single battery to last? Most likely I could be using the sabre for practice for a period of up to 2 hours. I'm happy to try cramming more cells in the chassis if it means longer runtime.

I did not mention mini-USB at all. As far as I know, mini-USB is a dead interface type. Having looked further into what 'breakout' means, USB-C is not feasible (seems to have upwards of 10 'pins') and I will probably use a breakout board for a micro-USB connector.

Run time strongly depends on your blade illumination, and not much on the board. The Stardust is only consuming ~300uA in deep sleep, so with that you are looking at a shelf life of several months at least. With a good 18650 type Li-Ion you do not have to charge often. But of course you can always cram in multiple batteries if you can spare the space. But charging them in parallel might be an issue, you have to find a charger which can support that.

That is where an USB charger has its advantage: you have it everywhere, no need to bring a dedicated charger for your saber with you.

I know that the mini-USB is not widely used any more, except for Arduino boards ;o) , but I still prefer it mechanically to the slimmer micro-USB. To save room I mount a micro-USB on my Stardust boards and every Stardust will come with a micro-USB breakout included in the package. But now I'm experimenting with chassis designs and will probably use mini-USB. Easier to plug in/out.

All DIYino boards come in multiple colors, but in the functionality there is no difference. Except the newest run of Stardust, where I made red boards for sabers and white boards (wo/MPU) for blasters. But as the demand for saber boards is much higher than for blasters, I'm converting the whites to saber boards now to satisfy demand.

On the subject of my grand plans I'm not ready to disclose anything as of now, but stay tuned in the coming months :slight_smile: