The lightsaber is an iconic weapon from the Star Wars franchise, designed in all sorts of shapes and colors. Several fan-made versions have been built as well, quite a few of which use the almost ubiquitous neopixel. [Tirenoth] decided to build his first lightsaber using a series of neopixels, but decided on a unique build method.
Instead of the usual strip of neopixels, [Tirenoth] chose to use a bunch of neopixels in the 5mm LED form-factor. [Tirenoth] soldered each LED’s 5v pins and GND pins to the same pins on the next, rotating each LED 180 degrees, building a tower of pixels. The data in and out pins are soldered to the next (and previous) LED as well. This allows the series of LEDs to be a bit more stable physically, and allows them to be stacked close together, one on top of the other.
To control the neopixels, a Proffieboard is used, an open-source lightsaber controller. The Proffieboard uses an STM32 microcontroller and allows you to hook up LEDs or neopixels as well as a speaker. Its open-source software allows the animation of the pixels and the playing of sounds. It’s designed specifically for lightsaber builds and is programmed via the Arduino IDE.
[Tirenoth] has some nice pictures of the build in process and, of course some nice pics of the final result. He suggests that the blade would be the first to break in battle, though. There’s been a few lightsaber builds over the years, like this lightsaber with rave mode, or this lightsaber made with real lasers.
via Reddit.
Huh! A Jedi he is not.
May the Neopixel be with you.
This blade construction technique has been around for years. I built a blade this way 2 years ago based on instructions from the guy who made the proffie board. https://fredrik.hubbe.net/lightsaber/blade1.html
Pretty clever. So presumably if one fails it can be replaced?
Would be very useful as I’ve run into problems with failed pixels especially on the cheaper units.
Not impressed I’ve built lightsabers and my blades are removable and polycarbonate as well. No LEDs in blades and fully HARDCORE duellable. His blades aren’t
Maybe a “HARDCORE duellable” blade is not the purpose of this build… Trollolololol?
Does your blade have fancy light effects?
If so, please show the way to do that as that would make things a lot more sturdy to add to this topic.
Great build, did not know of the “normal-package” leds with adressable functionality at all. I think I’m going to order some to play with in a moment.
Are these leds 100% compatible, or did anybody observe glitches during usage?