Hightower wrote:
Id love to get my hands on one so I can start customizing sounds. Im pretty sure I read all of the replies but I didn't see a price. anyone know how much one goes for?
The Nano Biscotte is 54€ on the Plecter Labs website. The Spark Color 2 is $116 USD on the Naigons website.
MusicallyInspired wrote:
Are any settings besides saberfonts customizable on the NB? (not in-hilt)
On the NB you can fine tune a bunch of blade settings. From the Owner's Manual:
Parameters and fine tuning the saber
The configuration file includes a set of parameters dedicated to the sound section of
the controller and the gestural / motion detection (both being linked). A second set of
parameters handles the behavior of the high-power LED. Some parameters influence
both categories, since visual and sound effects are in tight relationship intrinsically. All
parameters are lowercase.
Motion & Gesture detection parameters :
Motion recognition is processed using complex low latency DSP algorithms, however,
most of the parameters used for those are internally computed so the user only has to
setup a few thresholds & sensitivity level as high-level parameters.
The overall sensitivity of the board is controlled by the “i” parameter. If you want a
more “verbose” saber while you’re satisfied of the swing / clash discrimination, just
increase that parameter a little bit, turning it to 57 instead of the default 53 value.
On the NB board, swings and clashes processed with the same sensor. A swing motion
must exceed ls (low swing) to be considered as a potential gesture and then stay
under hs (high swing) to trigger a swing sound. A clash is detected if motion goes
above lc.
The general sensitivity of the motion engine i belongs to the {0;99} range with
usable and standard values in the {50;80} range. Parameters ls, hs and lc belong to
the {0;1023} range.
Make sure you keep a good gap between hs and lc. Default parameters have been
setup for you and usually, only the “i” parameter has to be touched up.
If the saber is not sensitive enough to the swing: decrease parameter ls by a
few points. Don’t decrease ls too much or undesired swing sounds will be
triggered.
If a harder clash is required, just increase lc.
Gesture flows & priorities :
Our gesture analysis are so fast that sounds could be chained one after the other at
light speed! We therefore have to slow down the module because too many swing
sounds played in a short time are not so realistic. For that reason we implement
gesture flow limiters for swing and clash sounds.
Clash sounds have the priority over all other sounds
A clash sound can interrupt a swing sound even if the swing flow limiter is engaged
(just after a swing was triggered).
A clash sound cannot interrupt a previously triggered clash sound if the clash flow
limiter is still engaged (delay for triggering another one hasn’t expired).
A swing sound cannot interrupt a previously triggered swing sound if the swing flow
limiter is still engaged (delay for triggering another one hasn’t expired).
A swing sound can never interrupt a clash sound if the clash flow limiter is still
engaged, and whether or not the swing rate limiter is engaged.
If the clash flow limiter has expired, and even if the clash sound is still playing, a
swing sound can interrupt it. However note that we designed a special gesture filter
called AntiBounce™ to avoid a swing to be triggered after hard impact of the blade
which could echo enough energy back to the hilt (especially when using thick-walled
blades).
swing [0-500]: swing rate flow limiter. Delay during which swings cannot be
furthermore triggered.
clash [0-500]: clash rate flow limiter. Delay during which clashes cannot be
furthermore triggered.
Sound / Interaction Parameters
vol [0-4] : digital volume setup. 0 mutes the sound output, 4 is the
maximum volume.
shmrd [10-500]: duration of the shimmering effect of the high-power LED
during a clash. Make sure this duration is not too much longer than the
associated sound to keep a nice result.
shmrp [5-25]: periodicity of the light bursts during the clash effect. A slow
period will produce tight bursts.
shmrr [0-25]: random value applied to the periodicity of the light burst
during a clash effect. Allows having bursts that are not regularly spaced in time
which increases the realism. For instance, a period shmrp of 20 and a random
value shmrr of 10 will produce a period between two bursts varying between
20 and 30 (ie 40 and 60 ms).
focd [10-500]: duration of the Flash on Clash effect. Make sure this
duration is not too much longer than the associated sound to keep a nice
result.
focp [5-25]: periodicity of the light bursts during the Flash on Clash effect.
A slow period will produce tight bursts.
focr [0-25]: random value applied to the periodicity of the light burst during
a clash effect. Allows having bursts that are not regularly spaced in time which
increases the realism. For instance, a period focp of 20 and a random value
focr of 10 will produce a period between two bursts varying between 20 and
30 (ie 40 and 60 ms).
offd [0-10000]: Part of the Anti power off protection (A-POP™) using the
power off delay. To avoid accidentally powering off the saber, especially when
using a momentary button for activation, we added another power off
protection that isn't using an auxiliary switch (which doesn't exist on the NB
board). This parameter defines how long the user must press on the activation
switch to turn the saber off. Default is 200 which equates to 400 ms.
qon [0-3000]: “quick-on”. Allows having the blade ignited in a specific
amount of time rather than matching the duration of the power on sound. This
parameter is specified in milliseconds (ms), and should not exceed the
duration of any power on sounds.
qoff [0-3000]: same thing as above, but for the blade retraction. Also in
ms.
resume [0-1]: hum resume. Defines if sound comes back to where the hum
has been interrupted or not. Interesting for certain hums. Not sample accurate
but resumes the hum in a ballpark of 11ms from where it's been interrupted by
a fx sound (swing / clash).
deep [0-18446744073709551615]: defines the time after which the sound
board will move into deep sleep mode for saving power (
expressed in multiples of 20 ms. Default is 15000 which equates 300
seconds or 5 minutes. 360,000 equates 2 hours. 0 disables the feature. The
max value leads to 11,861,332,351 years (11.8 Tera-year). This parameter is a
good example that enlarging a parameter range to a stupid point just because
you can doesn't make the feature better.
High-power LED parameters :
drive [0-1023]: defines the maximum drive of the high-power LED. Leave it
to the maximum unless you understand how to use it. See the Drive
Adjustment section for more details.
fdrive[0-1023]: defines the maximum drive of the high-power die use for
the Flash on Clash (FoC) effect
flks [0-20]: speed of the energy variation / flickering effect of the blade. A
high value produces a damaged saber effect while a small value generates
subtile energy changes. The value 0 disables the effect (static blade).
flkd [0-100]: depth (in %) of the energy fluctuation effect, i.e. the the
range over which the LED brightness will be affected during the effect. A low
value does not modify the energy very much while a high value « digs » big
steps of light intensity. To be used with the parameter flks.
Clashes & Swings Selection Modes
The Nano Biscotte has a single random method for selecting the clash and swing
sounds. It’s the same as mode 3 on a CF board: this a improved random mode
refered as RandomX mode or “Bubble Sort” random. The idea is to avoid triggering
twice the same sound in a sequence. This new algorithm will make sure a sequence (8
swings / 8 clashes) does not have any duplicate, but you might still get a double
between 2 consecutive sequences of 8 sounds, in rare cases.