TOPIC: SARGE: A NeoPixel Prodigy

Prodigy was ordered in all-black and given a custom light-weathered and brushed finish. Custom-printed low-profile kill key. White LED switch. Covertec was replaced with a pommel-cube d-ring to help it fit in with the other Original Trilogy hilts.









7/8" wide, 37" long NeoPixel blade with a built-in 1" adapter. Brushed foil ring at the base mimics a Graflex front-end. Custom RotJ Warm Green blade color along with standard Red and Blue.











Motion Demo:



Custom "Sarge" Boot Sound:

I have been watching the neopixel tech slowly infiltrating the saber world, and it is quite interesting. As your demo illustrates, the power-on, power-off effects are very impressive, as is the brightness. But, I have wondered about durability.

None the less, an outstanding teaser! Can't wait to see the full review!

Hi Kouri.

That's one of the nicest power up and retraction FX I've seen so far using this tech, really smooth (I'm guessing you timed each pixel's fade to slightly overlap the next?). I recently saw a saber that supports Neo-Pixel (and two other blade types) which had a really awesome looking unstable blade effect, it looked like it was on fire! (It had some sort of wave pulse and flicker combined)

Will be interesting to see both your progress and how Neo-Pixel blades develop, but I love what I'm seeing so far,

For Tyeth

I know Saber Forge is working on a Neo-Pixel type set-up, but I don't have any kind of time line on it. Hopefully, it will be soon, and comparable to what you have demonstrated here!

Brax wrote:
It depends on the style of LED - NeoPixels are available in a few different packages.

If you go with the 5mm/8mm package, the blade is built similarly to the older style string blade. Pros are better runtime and smoother diffusion. Downsides are increased difficulty in assembly, increased weight, and reduced durability.

They're also available in strips of pre-soldered SMD LEDs, and the upcoming standard seems to be 1m strips of 144 LEDs. The assembly process is basically placing two such strips back-to-back, and then wrapping them with foam diffuser/padding before inserting into the blade. The downsides are decreased runtime and slightly less-even diffusion, but pros are lighter weight, much easier assembly, and vastly improved durability. As far as I know, a strip-blade hasn't lost any LEDs in durability testing - the point of failure is likely going to be the plug that connects the blade to the board. While this style of neopixel blade is is lighter than the other, the blade is still heavy than an empty equivalent would be - so that might affect dueling, but it's otherwise plenty strong enough for the task.


For Tyeth wrote:
That's actually one of the presets on Plecter's NeoPixel support. Aside from just blinking each LED on/off one-after-the-other, it's a gradual on/off that makes the transition very smooth.


For Tyeth wrote:
Yeah, that needs one of the arduino-based boards that let you custom-program effects. I'm sitting on one for a future Kylo build, though I'm planning on tweaking the flame code to make it less orange.

Brax wrote:
Last time Phil mentioned it, he acknowledged Igniter already supports NeoPixels, so while it's not a confirmation, that's probably the best bet:

Kouri wrote:
I thought you had programmed that Ignition/Retraction FX but it's still impressive. Having seen that video (on the 3 blade type saber) a Kylo Ren project was what I thought about and was hinting at for a possible future build for you, but I didn't want to overwork you!

Looking forward to seeing more, thanks

For Tyeth

Was caught by surprise when the metallic foil ring I installed below the bunny ears wound up semi- translucent.

That is a cool effect, intentional, or not!

In the middle of snapping photos of the hilt that'll go in the original post. In the mean time, here's a color demo:

Damn! That is nice!

That is a really cool effect!

Updated the first post with images.

Whipped up a matching blade plug.