TOPIC: hitoren?

Hey guys!! Recently I came across this lightsaber brand "hitoren". Can't really find much about it, but apparently it's 12v, in-hilt usb recharge, in-hilt led, simple hilt,3 fonts and mute, blade... all for 99 USD???!! What do you guys think? Says that they are made in China and Korea, hence the low cost... seems kinda fishy tho... go check it out and tell me what u think!!

they are from Hong Kong from what I hear, and their quality is a mystery. One for sure, I would not swing it around, might break down real quick

I've picked up one of the old V2 stringblades. Decent piece of tech. Basic hilt. Gave it to some kids, they're still enjoying it.

The guy behind it is part of a few facebook groups and seems to be a standup guy.

Been meaning to try the new V3 with in-hilt LED, once I've the funds to spare. Should make for some decent beater hilts, and swapping out the included thin-wall blade for a thick-wall should make should make it as solid as any other hilt. Also just tempted to gut the thing and see what the new soundboard's capable of.

At least now I know it's not a scam haha... it's selling on a local online site. Thinking of getting the v3, I wouldn't even have to bank transfer, just meet up and pay. Kouri any idea why I can barely find anything about hitoren online?

Blorb wrote: Driven by curiosity, did an online search to see what it was all about and the item is listed as $999USD? Big difference to the $99USD you referenced.

I think any company / manufacturer can make a simple metal hilt, put electronics and LED inside and polycarbonate for lights. But it takes a lot more to manufacture something that looks like it is out of Star Wars, perhaps fit for extreme dueling, bright, loud and lasting.

For $99, the international postage might be at least half that price too.

My source was Aaron Lin from The Pach Store. There are other sellers carrying the hilt, perhaps with the same name. The won't be much information anywhere though, since it's a mass-production Chinese hilt being resold by various vendors.

Yeah... remain a little confused still cos the search also returned The Pach Store as the Outlet and it definitely lists it at $999USD? Anyway... moving on.

OvrcAHst wrote:
OvrcAHst see this: http://the peach store.com/collections/starwarssay/hitorenv3

Seems like 99 to me...is it not?

Blorb wrote:
Ordered one from the site earlier today, can confirm it's 99 dollars for a hilt, blade, and in-hilt light (plus $32 shipping, mind you). $131 total and 2 weeks shipping. Will do a write-up when it arrives in two weeks.

I got silver hilt/ blue blade, but it appears a lot of the colors have sold out on The Pach Store so options may be limited if you're considering it.

I'm not expecting anything groundbreaking when it arrives, but I'm hoping to be surprised. Wouldn't hurt to have a mass-produced brand available.

Blorb wrote:
To clarify/correct that I wasn't caffeine deprived..


But delved a little further, my error. Initial Listings may have been outdated.

Haha had me confused

Snakeeyz99 wrote:
Looking forward to it! I'm desperately wanting a second saber and hitoren is the top of my list now, considering the price

I just got it in yesterday, but I won't have time to do a proper write-up until Monday because of the holidays. A few quick points:

-The LED uses a convex lens, not sure how that ends up affecting the optics. the LED is a 6W and I can't really tell if it's resistored or not. If it is, they are internal to the module and blocked off by thermal paste.
-The heat sink/LED is much larger and appears to be a set of heat dispersing blades, much like a CPU cooler. Because of this some of the LED light escapes through the back.
-The 18650 they used is an unprotected cell. Hopefully there should be no wiring issues, but all in all I would feel a lot safer holding the blade if I knew there was a protection board on there. The leads aren't soldered directly to the battery, though, so it should be fairly easy to swap out.
-The soundboard is up the switch section/body, the only two pieces which aren't modular. This makes it difficult to access the board without gutting the hilt entirely.
-The hilt is super long, which means cram-fu is easy. Hardest spot is the switch section where you have the LED wires, switch wires and charge port wires cming together.
-The hilt comes with a ton of black, rubber washers for aligning the parts and some spare LED/blade retention screws. The emitter uses two screws for blade retention, which seems necessary for the thin-wall blade it comes with since the blade will flex much more easily at the screws.
-The sound is a bit funky. Probably due to a combination of cheaper soundboard, the speaker being flushed up against some chicken wire at the base of the pommel, and the lack of an echo chamber towards the pommel. Sensitivity is okay but could be better. There is a blaster deflect function I think? It sounds really strange, so I'll have to make a video for it.
-No pulse function/FoC.
-If you plan to use it for dueling, you'll probably need to apply threadlocker to the components. Just swinging the hilt with a blade in it seems to loosen them up a bit.

I have some holdups about the battery and how well it'll hold up without something keeping the threads locked up, but overall so far so good. I'd rate it decent overall. Not much of a looker, but good enough.

Also, here's a sneak peek at some pictures:

http://imgur.com/a/vDWf0

The Pach store is also making more serious SW hilts now. This competes with most of the production Star Killer hilts. They also made the Eunomia, which is pretty sweet.

So the Hitoren arrived at the end of last week, just about 2 weeks after the date of the order at The Pach Store. The total price was 131 dollars, which accounted for a $79 hilt, $20 for the in-hilt LED upgrade, and $32 shipping to the continental US (yeah, shipping was nearly 25% of the total cost). Shipping was done through DHL.



The package arrived at my door and did not require signature confirmation. I'm actually lucky to have noticed it, since the package was a tube and the delivery driver placed it near a bunch of poster tubes I have in my carport. It was a bit banged up and one of the sides was closed using exclusively packing tape, since I guess someone somewhere along the line lost the lid. THe hilt and blade were surrounded by an extraordinary amount of bubble wrap so the box damage wasn't an issue, but it was extremely hard to actually get everything out of the tube. I actually needed to use another lightsaber to push it out, it was packed so tightly.

The contents of the package:



The blade came with a baggy full of rubber washers and retention screws for blade retention and hilt alignment, since most of the parts are threaded. There was also a USB to 3.5mm recharge cord, though I haven't had a chance to test charging yet (I'll probably replace the battery before then, but that'll come later in the review). The retention screws in the bag were key since there are two holes for blade retention in the emitter and none were provided in-hilt. It comes with 2-3 extras as well, in case you lose some. My only problem with the retention was realizing that both screws were seemingly necessary with the thin wall blade, since it would wobble with only one. The polycarbonate flexed so much it was hard to determine what tightness was needed, so I ended up just using one of my SF blades for convenience.

As for the threaded parts, it's mostly super convenient. As you may be able to see in the picture, the blade and LED sections of the emitter are separate and allow better access to these areas for cable management. As for the pommel sections, the larger threaded part that would typically be part of the body cannot be removed without desoldering the speaker contacts. The section itself doesn't seem to serve much purpose, actually, since all of the electronics seemed to be crammed in the extended "switch" section (rather than the speaker and speaker wires). It does't even function as an echo chamber since the speaker is crammed up to a washer with some chicken wire at the very base of the pommel. It may be better to just remove this since the hilt is very long anyways.

The main issue with this many unsecured threaded sections with at just swinging the blade seems to loosen everything, so I'm not sure it can hold up without locking the threads.

Once it's all unscrewed, you can actually remove the 6W LED since it has a molex quick connector. You may need to do this to get better access to the switches, although there is plenty of slack in the cable. The heat sink and constuction of this module are very different from the ones I'm used to seeing so far. I'm tempted to undo the screw securing the heat sink and checking out the entire module (though it may get a bit messy seeing as it appears to be packed somewhat with thermal paste). The other unique thing is the convex lens. This will actually extend the lens a short distance into the blade itself, but I'm not sure if it's optically beneficial or detrimental. There's a physicist somewhere who'd know more.

Under the LED are your vertically staggered, back-to-back charge port and LED lit switch. I'm not sure how flexible this space is because the wires look tight. The only space to maneuver is to the left and right of the components, and those spaces seem filled with LED wiring and port/switch wiring. It personally scares me off from trying to adjust them and creating a lot of work for myself getting it right again.

On the other end of the long section, there's a clip that secures the battery in place. Once that's removed the battery falls out, allowing you to see the soundboard secured by short switch wires to the very underside of the switches. That doesn't look designed at all to allow soundboard access and just makes me curiouser and curiouser about it. I left it for now so my breakdown didn't become a teardown, but I tried to get a picture of the board as I could see it.

As for the battery itself, they went the route of an unprotected 18650 cell of unverified capacity. Not a huge fan of that. I'm probably going to see if I can swap it with a spare protected battery since the holder in the hilt is just insulated foam tape wrapped around the battery. The electrical connection is made by spring contacts which I'm fairly sure are held to the battery exclusively by the foam tape.

Now, aside from internals...

The saber runs pretty well. It has 4 sound fonts (I don't remember the names, but there's a standard one, a darker one, a kinda cosmic-y one, and a silent one). I haven't tested it enough to figure out sound variety. The sound quality isn't the best, but it's decent. I think it may be the chicken wire that's messing with the speaker a bit. The motion sensor sensitivity could be a bit better, since waving the blade doesn't always produce a noise. The 6W light is decent and the switch LED appears to match the color of the blade. There is no pulse, flicker or FoC, just a solid colored blade. Overall, a decent and cheap lightsaber with a bunch of 'premium' features. With the length of the hilt, there's probably some room for customization and improvement for a DIY saber owner as well.

The lithium-ion USB charging circuit will prevent over-charging, so no worries there, but yeah, I'd be a bit worried with an unprotected cell if the board doesn't prevent over-discharging.

Kouri wrote:
Yeah, I wouldn't trust it. Sounds like a fire hazard waiting to happen. Reminds me of those "hoverboards" that came out of China the last couple years that kept catching on fire.

Kouri wrote:
Over discharging? Hmm... How does that work?

Basically, if the battery is allowed to drain faster than it's rated. For example, say the battery is rated at 2A. If your circuit pulls more than 2A worth of current at a single time (either due to designed power draw or a short circuit) and there's no protection in place, it will probably heat up due to the strain. Heat causes the rating to decrease, which causes the heat to increase, which causes the rating to decrease, eventually leading to catastrophic failure.

Though some 18650's have high discharge ratings, I don't know what they used in my Hitoren beyond the fact that the cell is not protected. Since there's no guarantee what protections are on the board I can't guarantee the battery won't go boom if an extended short occurs.