[Yanks1023]

I was thinking the same thing regarding cost, but with two WT's, the wand and pack are isolated sounds individually or can talk to one another so they each know what the other is doing (I believe thats how I understand Gpstar's explanation).

[gpstar]

Catching up on a lot of good content here, though still curious about some behavior of the WT boards and potentially slimming down the BOM to not have 2 of these rather expensive boards in the setup. I see there's only a single stereo output (with left/right channels) hence why you're limited to whatever is playing is always going to be THE output from the board. In looking through the user guide I think the answer is likely "no", but would there be a way to tell a track to play only on one channel (ie. via pan control for L/R balance)?

Alternatively, what if the audio files for the pack and wand be mixed so that the pack is on the left channel and wand is the right, and send the audio to the respective speakers or amplifier? And if you want a sound to come from both devices you leave it as a standard stereo mix? That way you could still have polyphonic sound and reduce the amount of TX/RX commands to tell each side to start/stop sounds--you just have a single source of truth for audio. It might also lead to some interesting tricks like an audio file that pans back and forth between L and R, sounding like it alternates between the pack and the wand.

Hmm

#1: You can not tell the Wav trigger to play a file only in one channel. It plays back stereo files only. You could make your stereo sound file only have audio in one channel if you wanted to achieve what you want. The wav trigger has what is called voice channels, when a file is playing it uses a voice channel. There are 14 of them, so it can only mix/playback 14 files simultaneously. When a file is no longer playing it frees up that voice channel it took. There is the super wav trigger which I think can do 28 files at one time, but it costs more and with my count, there is never any more than 8 files playing back/mixed at the same time, so a wav trigger fits the bill.

#2: this could work if you edit your sound files where left channel is one sound and right channel of the file is another, but it gets super complicated and limits what kind of mixing you can do, plus you would still need to run a 5th cable to the wand for audio versus the 4 wires.

[gpstar]

I was thinking the same thing regarding cost, but with two WT's, the wand and pack are isolated sounds individually or can talk to one another so they each know what the other is doing (I believe thats how I understand Gpstar's explanation).

Correct. Both are isolated but the pack and wand talk back and forth so it knows what each other is doing and they can tell each other to do something. Like play this sound because I am going to fire my proton stream, or speed up the cyclotron lights because the wand says I am about to overheat, or the pack ribbon cable is removed so the pack tells the wand you can not fire your proton stream right now, etc etc.

[JustinDustin]

I was thinking the same thing regarding cost, but with two WT's, the wand and pack are isolated sounds individually or can talk to one another so they each know what the other is doing (I believe thats how I understand Gpstar's explanation).

Correct. Both are isolated but the pack and wand talk back and forth so it knows what each other is doing and they can tell each other to do something. Like play this sound because I am going to fire my proton stream, or speed up the cyclotron lights because the wand says I am about to overheat, or the pack ribbon cable is removed so the pack tells the wand you can not fire your proton stream right now, etc etc.

Oohh, that's a really good point. I didn't think about the interactions on each device causing behavior changes like that. I could see that coming into play with removing the cyclotron cover as well, which may trigger the internal lights with different sounds and tell the wand to do something similar.

[jonogunn]

Anyone in Canada find the wav trigger for sale anywhere? Seems like most places stopped carrying them

gpstar,

Would the mp3 trigger work just as well? It seems that’s the only one I can find in canada

[gpstar]

Anyone in Canada find the wav trigger for sale anywhere? Seems like most places stopped carrying them

gpstar,

Would the mp3 trigger work just as well? It seems that’s the only one I can find in canada

The mp3 trigger is not polyphonic, so no.

[dankramer1138]

I've been looking ,and the Sparkfun Wav Trigger seems to be one of only two boards with polyphonic capability I can find.
The other one is the Adafruit Propmaker Wing that goes with their Feather platform.
I plan on using one of these to build a PKE meter, but I'm no programmer, so the CircuitPython needed to make it work is out of my current skill set.
I do think that someone who was skilled in Python could make it work with the Feather/Wing system though with much smaller boards.

[gpstar]

The only other polyphonic boards that I know are the Tsunami Super Wav Trigger that Sparkfun makes, which is from Robertsonics again. It is a larger board though and costs more but has more polyphonic channels. It may not fit in the wand either.. it might but it would be really tight and may hit the wand speaker.

Wav Trigger is 6cm x 6cm
Super Wav Trigger is 7.5cm x 7.34cm.

There is also the ARTEKIT WavTooEasy, it has lesser specs than the Wav Trigger though. It can only playback 10 files at once vs 14 in polyphonic. It is smaller though, but similar price to the wav trigger.

[jonogunn]

local store can order 2 in for me for $80 CAD/ea.

Does anyone know how much top of the line kits go these days like ninjatunes? I was hoping to keep costs down when going the custom route but do what I gotta do. gpstar's stuff looks lights years beyond the competition

[gpstar]

-Vibration motors working in both pack and wand. They ramp up or down depending on what is going on. First few minutes in the video I turn the sound off so you can hear the vibration motors only to get a sense of it. Then with the pack/wand sounds on after, to get a idea of how much noise they make when mixed with sounds.
-Cyclotron ramps up when the pack/wand is about to overheat when on power mode 5.
-Added a cyclotron direction toggle switch (clockwise / counter-clockwise)

Next i'm going to spend some time on the cyclotron and cyclotron switches, adding lights. Then the smoke afterwards. After that, more testing and debugging, I get a feeling the end of the road is nearing on this.

[Mcbaine37]

Gpstar, odd question for you or others: had anyone ever tried an audio excitor on inside of any wand or pack instead of rumble motors? I'm very curious if it would work and if you could use a stereo amp to run one excitor and one driver, eliminating the need for a rumble motor at all.

[gpstar]

Gpstar, odd question for you or others: had anyone ever tried an audio excitor on inside of any wand or pack instead of rumble motors? I'm very curious if it would work and if you could use a stereo amp to run one excitor and one driver, eliminating the need for a rumble motor at all.

Never thought about it, I am not familiar with audio excitor's.

[gpstar]

Just finished doing up a replacement for the cyclotron switches. Printing it out now, then I am going to add 8 led's into it. I am still unsure what I am going to do for the cyclotron. Looks like the screen used bench one just has wires in it only and no lights. So I may not do anything with it regarding lighting....

[AGiantSlor]

Gpstar, odd question for you or others: had anyone ever tried an audio excitor on inside of any wand or pack instead of rumble motors? I'm very curious if it would work and if you could use a stereo amp to run one excitor and one driver, eliminating the need for a rumble motor at all.

Never thought about it, I am not familiar with audio excitor's.

Do you mean something like this? I am not certain if this is visible as the group went private - a modder tried a resonance speaker and it works fantastic, albeit it needs to be very secure against the surface or it's a rattley mess.


There's video here but I don't know how to post it

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10 ... 2106485152

[gpstar]

Never thought about it, I am not familiar with audio excitor's.

Do you mean something like this? I am not certain if this is visible as the group went private - a modder tried a resonance speaker and it works fantastic, albeit it needs to be very secure against the surface or it's a rattley mess.


There's video here but I don't know how to post it

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10 ... 2106485152

hmm not bad. Though with a vibration motor, you can control the speeds, ramp it up and down etc to give different feedback effects. Personally I am just keeping the motors off, but tying into them since they are already part of the kit in the wand and pack....

[AGiantSlor]

Looking at these exciters, there are a bunch of small ones (1.5”) and surface mount with pre applied double sided tape - I think it may be my solution for sound in the wand - using a small rechargeable lipo, a 5v booster and 10w mini amp.

[gpstar]

Test print fits good and tight in the cyclotron housing.


STL for anybody who wants it.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5834759

[Mcbaine37]

Yeah, those components are what I was talking about. Thats cool to know it has been successful in another pack, I was curious about it. Might try it myself down the road.

Thanks for all the work on this, gpstar.

[dankramer1138]

The speed you're progressing on this is just amazing gpstar. At this rate, by the end of February, we should have full parts lists and wiring diagrams put together.

I took a chance and ordered some connectors for my hose. I went with 8-pin connectors, guessing that should be enough. If more are needed, I'll just get others and use these somewhere else.

[dankramer1138]

What is the correct size for the part? When I put it into Fusion 360, the file is scaled way too small. The vertical height of the whole part is only 0.64mm. That would make a proton pack that would fit on a LEGO figure.

Test print fits good and tight in the cyclotron housing.

STL for anybody who wants it.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5834759

[gpstar]

What is the correct size for the part? When I put it into Fusion 360, the file is scaled way too small. The vertical height of the whole part is only 0.64mm. That would make a proton pack that would fit on a LEGO figure.

Test print fits good and tight in the cyclotron housing.

STL for anybody who wants it.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5834759

Weird that Fusion 360 it scaled it down by 100.

It should be 64mm not 0.64mm

[dankramer1138]

Okay. I suspected it might be a specific multiplier it was reduced by. That will be easy enough to fix. Thanks.

[gpstar]

Okay. I suspected it might be a specific multiplier it was reduced by. That will be easy enough to fix. Thanks.

I re uploaded the file on thingiverse, the problem should be fixed.

[gpstar]

The speed you're progressing on this is just amazing gpstar. At this rate, by the end of February, we should have full parts lists and wiring diagrams put together.

I took a chance and ordered some connectors for my hose. I went with 8-pin connectors, guessing that should be enough. If more are needed, I'll just get others and use these somewhere else.

Yes things are progressing rather quickly. I just finished soldering up 8 leds for the Cyclotron switch plate, 3 yellows, 3 greens and 2 reds, they will interact with the switches and the proton pack status. I should have the led cliplite mounts on Tuesday.

This upcoming week, it will be mostly tweaking the code (some game firing mode tweaks) and searching and fixing any bugs.


Smoke is the only thing I haven't thought deeply about yet. I will probably add it after I finish this. Lights in the cyclotron I thought about it and it looks like a cool effect, but correct me if I am wrong? There are no lights in the cyclotron, just wires only? It can be added easily but....??

[MassiveDMG]

Most smoke kits are triggered by a relay or switch. Perhaps have some code that could trigger one, you could leave the smoke kit up to the user?

[gpstar]

Most smoke kits are triggered by a relay or switch. Perhaps have some code that could trigger one, you could leave the smoke kit up to the user?

Ya it is no problem, I can set a pin to go high on 5v which you can wire to a transistor to a 5v smoke machine or a pump or a fan or whatever.

[dankramer1138]

I'm personally going to be adding lights in the Cyclotron area. Remember, when we saw the inside of the pack in the movie, it wasn't functional yet, and Phoebe was just starting the repair.
I'm going to be modding mine to be a very personalized pack, so movie accuracy isn't something I'm concerned with myself. I would say that if there are free pins on boards that can be used for lights or switches, note it in the code so a user can enable the pin for what they need it to do.
Arduino code is easy enough to read that if the functions are labeled well for novice users, most of us can work out customization for ourselves. Good labeling in the code will prevent posts here asking how to do this, that, or the other thing later on.

[gpstar]

I'm personally going to be adding lights in the Cyclotron area. Remember, when we saw the inside of the pack in the movie, it wasn't functional yet, and Phoebe was just starting the repair.
I'm going to be modding mine to be a very personalized pack, so movie accuracy isn't something I'm concerned with myself. I would say that if there are free pins on boards that can be used for lights or switches, note it in the code so a user can enable the pin for what they need it to do.
Arduino code is easy enough to read that if the functions are labeled well for novice users, most of us can work out customization for ourselves. Good labeling in the code will prevent posts here asking how to do this, that, or the other thing later on.

What were you thinking? A Neopixel ring or strip? Chaining multiple NeoPixels together?

I have some spare ones laying around I can chain up and sync with the cyclotron lid lights...

[JustinDustin]

> What were you thinking? A Neopixel ring or strip? Chaining multiple NeoPixels together?

Seeing as there's a conversation around this portion of the internals, I planned to use a Neopixel ring for inside my cyclotron, possibly triggered off the removal of the cover (so they're only running when the cover is detected as open. Is it possible to just offer a stub function in the code (eg. "lid opened") to branch off the opening of the lid to do some action like trigger an alarm and/or shutdown sequence, or switch to activating lights within the "cake"? If there's a function at least reserved for the action, then users could determine whether they want code to animate Neopixel jewels or a ring.

[gpstar]

> What were you thinking? A Neopixel ring or strip? Chaining multiple NeoPixels together?

Seeing as there's a conversation around this portion of the internals, I planned to use a Neopixel ring for inside my cyclotron, possibly triggered off the removal of the cover (so they're only running when the cover is detected as open. Is it possible to just offer a stub function in the code (eg. "lid opened") to branch off the opening of the lid to do some action like trigger an alarm and/or shutdown sequence, or switch to activating lights within the "cake"? If there's a function at least reserved for the action, then users could determine whether they want code to animate Neopixel jewels or a ring.

Yup easy enough, just need to know how many leds are in the ring.

I will chain up these 8 jewels I have and implement them, then do a ring after and put a toggle flag in the code.