First dedicated Arduino board for Blasters - welcome the Stardust "B"

[RankAndFileTrooper]

I finished this nice gift to my nephew, including some medium weathering to make it look like a blaster which has been put to heavy use.

 

I made a video features a double pack of iconic Star Wars weaponry:

- lightsaber with a Tri-Cree RGB LED in-hilt LED

- and this blaster which uses purely neopixels for illumination

 

To the FX-BlasterOS system code I made certain changes, mainly to make it easier for children to interact with the blaster. I also improved the status bar code a lot, and with the rigid, ultra-dense neopixel stick I used for the status/power bar/PLI I think it has now a whole lot of more possibilities than the LED bar used in the past.

 

 

I really enjoyed working with a full plastic toy blaster as a base due to them being extremely easy to work with, unlike metal or resin. This one had the additional bonus feature that it came with a momentary switch integrated into the trigger, so all I had to do was to wire it to the Stardust board.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ask382]

OOO

I definetivly want one

Is it still possible to order one??

[RankAndFileTrooper]

Sale will start anyway only in September. Although I will get the first bigger batch till end of the month, I can start testing them only in early September due to a longer vacation. I will keep you in the loop. For all of those who want to be in on the first run, drop me a pm and I can take you up on the pre-order list. Pre-order is not binding, but I want to gauge the demand, because the blaster option is slightly different from the saber option in the assembly.

[Twnbrother]

I would like to get one. Do you offer technical help of needed?  I live about two hours from Munich.   This would be my first attempt.  I thought about putting this in Fieldmarshalls upcoming E-11. Along with the pwhiteows new display that fits in bulldogs hollow M38 or in the Phoenix props that I am building now

Edited July 31, 2017 by Twnbrother

[RankAndFileTrooper]

Hi guys, I've got a lot of PM's from you who want to sign up on the pre-order list, just to let you know, your message has not gone unnoticed, you will all get a board, I have a large batch, anticipating the huge interest. It's just that I'm currently on vacation and back only early September, but once I touch down on home grounds again I will get in touch will all of those who has or will sign up on the pre-order list by then.

 

Cheers!

Andras

[ukswrath[Staff]]

8 hours ago, RankAndFileTrooper said:

Hi guys, I've got a lot of PM's from you who want to sign up on the pre-order list, just to let you know, your message has not gone unnoticed, you will all get a board, I have a large batch, anticipating the huge interest. It's just that I'm currently on vacation and back only early September, but once I touch down on home grounds again I will get in touch will all of those who has or will sign up on the pre-order list by then.

 

Cheers!

Andras

 

Very cool, looking forward to it.

 

[josmargordon]

Hello, I want to enter the list of arduino blaster to.

[Harbinger[IPM]]

Will you be putting a list together of needed battery/transistor/etc. parts for those of us less technically inclined? Never done any arduino stuff before.

[RankAndFileTrooper]

19 hours ago, cinderbike said:

Will you be putting a list together of needed battery/transistor/etc. parts for those of us less technically inclined? Never done any arduino stuff before.

 Sure I can do. Actually you only need to add peripherials you intend to desing in into your blaster. The Stardust board is fully integrated, i.e. all necessary stuff is included you need to:

- drive LEDs

- drive neopixel strings

- drive other peripherials which need a driving stage with transistors (like a buzz motor for example)

- drive OLED via I2C

 

So for a standard setup you will need basically:

- a Li-Ion/LiPo battery, most commonly used are those of the type 18650

- an 8Ohm/2W speaker (can be up to 3W and also 4Ohm, but you can easier source a 8Ohm/2W and it's pretty much the perfect one)

- neopixels (single or stripes) or LEDs (standard or High-Power) for the lights

- tactile switches for the trigger and optionally a 2nd switch

- optionally an OLED display (I will mainly work on the engine for that in the near future)

- any other peripherials you might want to add (buzz motor, etc)

 

There are design hints in the User Manual.

[RankAndFileTrooper]

Good news, the first Run of the Stardust B arrived and currently undergoing rigorous tests and quality checks.

 

Therefore Sales starts NOW

 

As already mentioned in the thread, the Stardust B board costs 54 EUR + 6 EUR shipping.

If you order 3+ boards, price is reduced to 49 EUR/board + one time shipping.

Payment is via PayPal to [email protected]

If paying for services, add +3.9% for fees.

Please indicate following items in the comment field along with your payment:

- your name

- shipping address

- Forum nickname, and also Forum name (i.e. Whitearmor)

- "Stardust B" if you want to build a blaster, to be able to tell these orders apart from lightsaber prop orders

 

I will handle orders in the order they come in. Boards are shipped out always on Saturdays, I can guarantee shipping in same week if payment arrived by Thursday.

 

By buying a board you confirm to have read the User Manual and understood the specification (see Stardust User Manual ),

 

Warranty (yes, I do offer this, mostly because I know that they are going to work ):

90-day replace or money back guarantee on the Stardust v2 board if they stop working during normal use (NO PHYSICAL DAMAGE)

I will not accept returns which are soldered to things, boards must be de-soldered and clean before return.

 

Edited September 14, 2017 by RankAndFileTrooper

[RankAndFileTrooper]

The first Stardust boards are on their way to their happy new owners, so it's time to prepare them for their first contact with their new blaster core.

 

Therefore I included in the User Manual a new Chapter called "Getting Started" , where I summarized all info needed to guarantee a smooth start in a new world of programmable boards.

 

Stardust User Manual

 

Any feedback is highly welcome and appreciated!

[LTM[TK]]

Sent my money to yahoo.COM and not yahoo.de 

Corrected, let me know if you got it today.

Lou

[RankAndFileTrooper]

 

I made this schematic drawing of an E11 blaster to show what type of components I used for the blasters I've built. I think a picture tells more than a thousand words, therefore instead of a list I decided to go with this:

 

 

 

If you have any enquiry about any of these parts, I can gladly link in where I got them. Mostly on ebay, and directly from Adafruits, they have amazing neopixel stuff.

 

[ukswrath[Staff]]

Very nice, excellent work

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

[LTM[TK]]

On 10/7/2017 at 4:30 PM, RankAndFileTrooper said:

 

I made this schematic drawing of an E11 blaster to show what type of components I used for the blasters I've built. I think a picture tells more than a thousand words, therefore instead of a list I decided to go with this:

 

 

 

If you have any enquiry about any of these parts, I can gladly link in where I got them. Mostly on ebay, and directly from Adafruits, they have amazing neopixel stuff.

 

I would be interested in the links.

[RankAndFileTrooper]

Although not related to the blaster topic, I wanted to share this! I'm very proud to be a member of the 501st Legion, just recently!!!

 

TK-83607 reports to duty!

 

Edited October 23, 2017 by RankAndFileTrooper

[RankAndFileTrooper]

This one is something I've been planning on implementing for a long time now! I always liked the iconinc Star Wars characters used in the movies and wanted to tweak the code of FX-BlasterOS to be able to switch the OLED dislay between outputting the default font and the Star Wars font. Now it works!

The Stormtrooper head is my own bitmap I implemented to replace the characters [ and ] .

The OLED display on the pics is a 128x64 type, I configured it as 128x32, therefore the somehow pixely feel. If used with a 128x32 the characters will be more compact and better looking, I will make some new images using the smaller display.

 

Aurebesh (Star Wars characters) intro display with "hand-crafted" Stormtrooper bitmap:

 

Original intro display:

 

Blast mode status display, Aurebesh-style:

 

Same with ordinary characters:

 

 

The font file suitable to be used with the Adafruit library can be found here:

https://github.com/Protonerd/FX-BlasterOS/blob/master/libraries/Adafruit-GFX-Library-master/Fonts/Aurebesh_6pt.h

 

[RankAndFileTrooper]

Here are pictures from my DoopyDoo E11 blaster, I uploaded the new code using the Star Wars font characters, this is how it looks like on a 128x32 OLED display:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[RankAndFileTrooper]

Thanks a lot for the huge interest the Legion showed for my Stardust v2 board. There are a lot of boards on the field now, waiting to be installed into blasters worldwide, please do other users a favor and make photos/videos of your builds and share them. Let's show the guys trooping out there how much more fun a blaster is with proper electronics.

 

The 1st Run is sold out and for the Xmas period I will stop sales. But do not worry, I already made provisions to start a 2nd Run run in January. If you are interested to participate in the 2nd Run, you can leave me a PN and I will include you on the pre-order list.

 

Furthermore, many troopers asked me if I could make a complete shopping list to help them get all the items before their Stardust board arrives. Now it is the right time to write to Santa to get these items in time for the 2nd Run.

 

SHOPPING LIST

 

First In include a pictural overview of the most widely used components used:

 

 

Battery:

You do not need to include a battery with 3000+ mAh, blasters do not consume so much power. Important is to have a Li-Ion/LiPo battery (nominal voltage 3.7V), ideally with a caacity of around 500-1000mAh (of course the more the better, but take care about limited space in your blaster). The Stardust v2 board has an on-board charger chip, so you can skip buying an expensive external charger (saves you 20-30$). I've already built blasters with battery type 10440, but I would recomment a 18350 or 18500 (first 2 digits are the diameter in mm, so 10mm and 18mm respectively, the last 3 digits the lenght in mm, so 44, 35 and 50mm respectively).

 

Speaker:

You need a max 3W speaker, recommended is a 2W (easier to come by), with 8Ohm or 4 Ohm resistance. The size should be up to 28mm (but free to take bigger if you have space). If you target to make a blaster which feels perfectly like holding a real blaster, take a Veco, it will make your blaster vibrate !!!

VECO bass speaker

 

Ligths generally: all light I use are WS2812B type neopixels. You can easily source them from ebay or other online sources. They originate from Adafruit, so if you can, please suport them by buying directly from them.

 

Light for the barrel:

For the barrel I recommend using neopixel strips of the type 60LED/m, or 144LED/m (densest currently on the open market) for a more extreme build):

Neopixel stripe

 

Light for the nozzle:

You can chain up a single neopixel element called a Flora to the end of the barrel stripe, believe me, unless you want to cause permanent damage to the eye of event visitors, the brightness of a Flora is more than enough to impress everyone. Of course you are free to include whatever LED you want to the front. To make the light seem more focussed, you can take a 20mm Carclo lense and glue it to the Flora (they are meant for high-power LEDs like the tri Cree for which you can take the same lense)

Adafruit neopixel Floras

 

 

Status LEDs:

They are for status dislay, you can use them to display ammo or currently selected mode, like I show in some of my videos. They can replace or complement an OLED status display. They are the same neopixels are the stripes and the Floras, but slightly more dense than even the 144LED/m and on a rigid PCB, which lends itself better to build it in facing outwards.

Adafruit neopixel sticks

 

Trigger switch:

Take one with a long lever. You might have to look for it on international sites, but I can link in one from a German vendor to show how it looks like:

momentary switch with long lever

 

OLED display:

An OLED status display makes an awesome mod to your blaster, it can be used for multiple purposes from ammo count display to intro screen etc.

Make sure you pick one with 128x32 dots using I2C interface (4 pins, GND, VCC, SCL, SDA).  Color white or blue.

128x32 I2C OLED dislay

 

[RankAndFileTrooper]

Restock of the Stardust B has arrived!!!

 

To take into consideration that the majority of the customers are from the USA, all payments can be done in US$ from now on.

 

Price is 59 US$

This is a price drop compared to the 1st Run, caused by the weak US$!

Shipping is 6 US$ worldwide.

 

For other terms and conditions see previous posts.

 

I added a full wiring diagram of the Stardust B which includes all lights, OLED display, trigger etc.

 

 

[Plainsrunner]

Do you have a storefront or how do you order one?

 

Thanks!

[RankAndFileTrooper]

On 1.2.2018 at 6:34 PM, Plainsrunner said:

Do you have a storefront or how do you order one?

 

Thanks!

So much about reading minds  I've just started to make a homepage this week. While it's still under construction, I hope it can go on-line in the coming week(s). Until that time please browse this thread, you will find all relevant information to be able to order.

[RankAndFileTrooper]

Protowerkstatt Homepage

 

The site is still under construction, but order info for the Stardust V2 you can already find here:

https://www.protowerkstatt.com/diyino-prop-boards