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Building An Alternative to Blastercore: E-11 Sound/LED Board


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why must my suggestions always meet with criticism?

 

I'm a musician.. and I hear mono as mono...?  other blaster setups actually have stereo sound?

so why not this project?

 

gee... I guess  mono must be better for most people...

sheesh?

 

blastercore setups I have seen have 2 speakers... one in the pipe... and one in the counter..

but I guess I'm just not paying attention?

X citer... hmmm...

 

i guess mono is fine... ahhhh...  does not really matter after all...

hmm...

 

not like my opinion really matters anyway?

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If you want two speakers you can simply wire up two speakers in parallel on the same mono channel.

 

Why I'm questioning the stereo feature is because the typical blaster is too small for your ears to even with full stereo to pick up much of the the difference in left/right. Rendering the exercise more or less pointless. It's the horizontal distance between the speakers that makes the difference.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

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why must my suggestions always meet with criticism?

 

I'm a musician.. and I hear mono as mono...?  other blaster setups actually have stereo sound?

so why not this project?

 

gee... I guess  mono must be better for most people...

sheesh?

 

blastercore setups I have seen have 2 speakers... one in the pipe... and one in the counter..

but I guess I'm just not paying attention?

X citer... hmmm...

 

i guess mono is fine... ahhhh...  does not really matter after all...

hmm...

 

not like my opinion really matters anyway?

Vern, my board supports stereo sound. It's fairly easy to swap the resistors around to enable it, and I'm purposely using a standard sub mini stereo audio jack to allow for it. Please read my last post where I actually (albeit indirectly) support your views on stereo sound. Your opinions are valid and being heard.

 

The audio decoder chip outputs stereo by default and I combine the two channels into a single one with external resistors. I'm not sure if this makes the output to the speaker louder or not, but that's something for the experimentation phase.

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thanks.. the only critic I know is not the designer of the board... anyhow... I like one large speaker as you show but I was thinking

there might be smaller diameter speakers with a 3 way treb mid boost feature like those found inside headphones.

 

this way one speaker could be mounted in front near the vent holes open on the left side in front of the bolt section of the

blaster... and the other speaker could be mounted facing rearwards at the other end of the bolt assembly.

 

this way the bolt itself would have the speakers mounted on each side of the bolt facing front and rear.

 

and the goal of assembly for me would be to put the electronics in the front of the blaster... with the whole assembly

entering the front though the barrel.

 

this way the rear of the spring area would be a soundhole... and the front of the blaster would also be a vent hole

for sound.

 

this way it eliminates the need for a screen over the cocking channel.. and improving the overall look of the

toy gun.

 

this project is probably the most interesting due to the fact that it's new.

 

I personally don't like the Xciter name.. it's too mod...as a joke I suggest you call it the I blaster..

 

the name might change... but the concept is the same...

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Why would you need stereo sound? No real gun is stereo...

ok  we all have 2 ears... and this is a pointless meaningless criticism.

 

so what basis in science supports that no real guns are heard in stereo sound?

blink... and I blink again... I have 2 eyes... so I must only see one point of view?

 

and I have 2 ears... so I must only hear one sound... in mono.... of course...

2 speakers wired in mono...? huh?

 

I'm sorry... but science does not support this silly notion.

 

we all have 2 ears... and we naturally hear in 2 channels.

 

to each their own... and may the individual choose their own path...

Edited by TK Bondservnt 2392
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Sigh...

 

 

It is you who don't understand.

 

"Stereophonic sound or, more commonly, stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that creates an illusion of directionality and audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two or more independent audio channels through a configuration of two or more loudspeakers in such a way as to create the impression of sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereophonic_sound

 

You can hear in stereo, but that does not mean that when the same sound is heard from the same source, it is stereo. And you can definitely wire up two speakers in mono, you simply play exactly the same sound through them at the same time.

 

One could argue that if you were to wire up microphones at each end of a gun, one by the breach and one by the muzzle that you could record the gun in stereo, as you would get one sound from the powder charge exploding, and one from the bullet breaking the sound barrier recorded into each microphone. But the close distance between these two, both in terms of distance and time, makes it inaudible for both the shooter and the target to differentiate. Thus creating a single channel sound as the two blends together.

 

As for you eyes, don't be silly. There is a reason why 3D movies are called 3D compared to any other movie. Just because you are able in most situations to perceive depth does it mean that it exists in a flat image even when you are looking at it via a stereoscopic device, such as your (assuming) functional two eyes. The movie has to be recorded with a stereoscopic camera (or post-edited) that can caputure two slightly different images to be individually fed to each of your eyes through (today) polarized glasses that block one of the two images from each eye, making them see two different images.

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  • 3 weeks later...

sometimes I wonder why... but then I just choose to enjoy...

i'm interested in this thread only for the joy... nothing else...

personally I don't like the way certain people think... 

Edited by TK Bondservnt 2392
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I am watching this thread with great interest.....Kudos to you Sean !!!!  If you're able to get this out in a kit form to the masses out there you're going to get a LOT of orders....

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just a quick update tonight.

 

I have the UART up and running for printing debug information to my screen, the ADC channels sampling correctly, and the pulse width modulation (PWM) working. I'm slowly building the infastructure needed to put the whole thing together. Various other pieces of code are starting to come together as well (trigger pull function, audio level, config button press, fire rate / stun select mode, etc.). Up to about 755 lines of code now.

 

Getting the PWM to work correctly was a pain in the butt. Turns out I accidentally took a semaphore twice just prior to initializng PWM which cause some undefined behavior. All good now, though :)

 

I'm also working on getting a home lab set up with a solder reflow station, soldering iron, oscilloscope, DC supply, etc. so I can work on this at home as well. Should speed things up a bit.

 

UART_PWM_Working_zpsccd0fdab.jpg

Edited by swmand4
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  • 2 weeks later...

A little more progress today. I discovered an error in my PCB design (!) where the power transistors for the high brightness LED were mirrored. Stupid datasheet broke convention and showed pin orientation from the bottom of the chip instead of the top... So there will need to be a PC board redesign and round two of ordering at some point in the future. I'll need to finish testing other parts before I do that in case there are more mistakes. For now, I have a work around that just rotates the transistors and hacks them in place. Red and blue work, but green does not and the firmware code to turn on blue is labeled "green". Oh well, works for now. See for yourselves:

 

IMG_20140328_174150_808_zpsd9a2441a.jpg

 

IMG_20140328_170534_273_zps6bdf6084.jpg

 

IMG_20140328_172015_497_zpsa9a29f5b.jpg

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Too bad about the design but like you said, they broke convention so these things happen. Looking great nonetheless!

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

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Another piece of groundwork finished: The I2C drivers for the barrel LEDs is working. I spent hours trying to find out why I couldn't read the LED driver chip's registers back for debugging when I figured out this chip is write-only. It cannot respond to master commands.

 

If you thought the last picture was a mess of wires, take a look at this:

 

IMG_20140402_190247_105_zpsf591408c.jpg

 

Another step closer, but still a long way to go...

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Sean, your progress is always highly anticipated! This already looks fantastic and I am sure the final setup will be top notch. Keep the progress posts coming!

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

Well, things aren't going so great with this project right now :mellow: I cannot, for the life of me, get my microcontroller to communicate with an SD card. Seeing as I've never done this before, I don't know what exactly the problem is. I do know, however, that based on the 2K of RAM the AtMega328P has, I will either need to change microcontrollers or ditch the FreeRTOS. There simply isn't enough RAM to run both an RTOS and an SD card (as I understand it, an SD card reads 512 bytes at a time, or 1/4th my entire RAM). For now, I will prove the rest of the design works in pieces and then make overall system architecture changes later.

 

So then I moved on to SPI comms with the audio decoder chip... only to discover a pitfall involving dual uses of the 328P's reset pin. Long story short, I have no usable chips and will need to hack up a board to make it work once I get more. As I said, I will need to prove that the pieces work before moving on to redesign. I should have new MCUs Friday or Saturday.

 

These two mistakes are quite embarrassing as I do some of this for a living. However, I use entirely different chipsets, peripherals, and tools at work. So a lot of this is a learning experience for me...

 

As of now, I know the barrel LEDs (red&blue, but not green) work, high brightness RGB barrel tip LEDs work, ADC battery monitoring works, and the trigger (sort of) works. I still need to prove the SD card can read an MP3 file, the audio decoder chip can receive that MP3 and then play it, the green barrel propagation LEDs work, the power level bar graph works, the volume control works, the vibration motor works (should be relatively easy), the battery charge controller works, the select button works, and the fire rate selector works. After that, it should be all software and fine tuning.

 

At least I have a lab bench set up in my garage. It's something.

 

20140609_115655_zps33593136.jpg

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 year later...
  • 2 weeks later...

To be honest, I haven't worked on this in a long time. I still want to finish it, and might get some free time about a month to resume prototyping and coding.

 

I don't suppose anyone knows anything about reading an MP3 file off an SD card using an 8-bit micro-controller?

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  • 11 months later...

I know this thread is quiet but was wondering... can I purchase a cheap vibration motor from Amazon, splice the wires in a Hasbo E11 blaster and have it vibrate when I pull the trigger?  Would this cause the the lights and sound to be less?

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  • 3 weeks later...

No necroposting intended, but speaking about a ready to use kit, since it seems there is an interest in the community for such modules, there is already one for blasters: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/40360-arduino-based-e11-blaster-build-using-diyino/

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