Answers to Some Technical Questions

We're just about there, to the 50 follower mark. That went much faster than expected. To those of you who have made it, congratulations and expect to receive a free sound board upon execution of the first batch of boards.

Unlike previous light saber sound board manufacturers, our aim is to provide plenty for everyone. Rather than create an intentional deficit to drive the price high, we will create as many as possible, keeping the price very low, and profit by the sheer volume. So... my hope is that will be better for everyone.

In order for this to work, we need as much support as possible. I absolutely CANNOT do this without YOUR support. I very much appreciate what so many of you have done to propagate this new blog. Thanks for the twittering, following, e-mails, and message board posting! Now... we need MORE. The more support we have the faster these boards will be made available. The design is on paper and prototypical circuits right now. It's not set in stone, so we are still eagerly awaiting more feedback, and we are taking all these comments seriously to make this even better than I alone could have imagined. My partner and I have a fairly large portion of the circuitry laid out and we will soon be fabricating the first boards. As soon as this is available, I will post many pictures.

As for some technical features. Many believe that power drivers in existing boards are severely lacking in performance. This is one of the many aspects of the LSD-X4 which will be revolutionary. The main power input will be able to appropriately and fully handle a wide voltage range up to, beyond 20 volts. We are shooting higher, but we will have to see how well this works in the finished design. It will be a switching PSU hybrid and will generate minimal heat.

Similarly, the LED (or other lighting technology) main output circuit, CMS - Color Mixing System (Special Thanks to Justin Polachek), will be able to drive three separate 10 Watt channels, by user programmable pulse modulation (MCP). Furthermore, each channel is software controllable down to a resolution of at least 1:256. allowing for a total color count of 16,777,216, a familiar quantity to graphics programmers- 2^24 or (2^8 )*(2^8 )*(2^8). The 10 Watt output per channel will be a reasonable max, but not necessarily the physical max. The LSD-X4's feedback controllers will produce very little heat compared with a linear regulator (the usual). Plus, with very accurate control over the exact current limiter's each LED will be driven with the stated amount, whatever the user specify's. I will let your imagination wonder a bit here.

Next, for button control... Some people like more than one button, some people like none. Some even still want mechanical latching buttons. To satisfy everyone, the user will be presented with typical modes encompassing several styles widely used in light saber designs. However, as mentioned in a previous article, there is no limit to the amount of modification employable with the LSD-X4. As a simple example, consider this. If the user wants their hilt to have three buttons, two momentary and the other latching and each soldered to S1, S2, and S3 on the circuit board (here S stands for switch) then with the LSD-X4's flexibility, the user would be permitted to assign functions in any order to any of these buttons. The latching button could be assigned the command of power on / off. The other two buttons could be assigned "change color to red" / "change color to blue" respectively (assuming the utilized a multicolor emitter such as a RGB LED.) So, well... that, and all the possibilities, are pretty awesome to me!!!, what do you think?

I hope to read everyone's feedback on these issues.

-Jesse