Its an all-in one customizable programmable small light and sound kit solution? Sounds on an SD card is really interesting.
The name dosent contain the words Ghostbusters or proton pack why is it posted here ??? Considering that it has an sd card slot for something more than sound files (video files) ,ill say its a lighting controler for a video game pke ??? well am i close???
I didn’t say it doesn’t belong here. 
And no not video files. I’m not a miracle worker. Heh. You’ll have to wait for Mighty Microcontroller 2.0 for that.
I’m gonna take a few stabs at these hints.
That’s probably a good idea. I see potential in this beyond Ghostbusters props of course.
That surprised me. I guess I wasn’t expecting any kind of audio output.
I assume its able to run simple text files that dictate the light patterns. Perhaps in basic?
Perhaps servo control? Or other on / off control…
For serial communications?
I guess the only question I have is.. Are those chips powerful enough to light up 48+ LEDs at the same time?
Ok round two …is it a ..ahh hell with it ,lighting control for a ecto 1a replica , or better yet a game pack …yes thats it a game pack ..!!
We have a winner! (AJ and Lannyjack) 
Each of those chips can drive 24 leds, or 8 RGB leds. Constant current. No resistors needed. Adjustable brightness.
And 48 leds at the same time? Surely you jest.
There’s a 5A regulator onboard. And those LED modules can be chained together.
Try 200+.
- 200 leds on all the time at full brightness will use 200 * 20mA or 4A. The board has copper planes on both sides for heat sinking as well as thermal vias to get that heat to the other side of the board, but if you go over around 2.5A you’ll need to bolt the board to your motherboard to provide extra heat sinking. Nobody would run 200 leds at once though, what would be the point? You want them to animate. So if you assume on average half are always lit at once (still excessive), you’re right around 2.5A with the onboard amplifier pulling 500mA. Also one can run leds at 50% brightness to halve the power and because our eyes don’t detect brightness in a linear manner, they’ll still look around 75% as bright but use half the current. This is not something most who use this board will even need to worry about though. It is way over-engineered for driving the roughly 72 leds found in many props, and the typical proton pack has less than 48. It could however, handle a video game proton pack.
Btw, nobody’s guessed yet what the 3v power module is for. It has two primary uses. One you might guess, the other you probably won’t, but you’ll like it. I’ll say this: it can be turned on and off rapidly, and it has a flyback diode built in.
Not just the light patterns. What good are light patterns if you can’t control them or sync them to sounds? And yes, a greatly simplified version, interpreted line by line, with some variables but no user created functions because no stack.
I look forward to seeing it in action!
Interested to see how this compairs to the Plector Labs kits: http://www.plecterlabs.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=23&products_id=1148
Hopefully its cheaper.
This would be such a huge time saver for some of my other projects.
I’m really excited about this project. I have money on standby to support it.
Hm… That’s tough. It’s kind of an apples-to-oranges comparison, and there’s not much in the way of specs to go on.
The Plector Labs kits have clearly been designed with light sabers in mind, while my is more of a general prop driver, which wouldn’t fit in the hilt of a saber, but would fit just about anywhere else.
I guess if you want to compare specs though, the easiest thing to start with is the sound.
Judging by these specs, the boards would appear to be virtually identical in the sound department, but we’re missing some important details that would allow us to determine the true sound fidelity and volume for a proper comparison. It’s a safe bet though that the sound on my board will be as good or better because putting out high quality sound at high volume was one of my goals for this design.
I did notice the speakers he’s using are 8 ohm, which I fear may limit his amp’s output power to 1W. I can’t be certain though without knowing what amp he’s using and how he’s wired it. My board is capable of 3W into a 3Ohm speaker, but they don’t sell tiny speakers with that rating, so I’ll be advertising it as a 2W amp when paired with a 4ohm speaker.
Btw, my board will be twice as loud as those sound chips most people have been using in their packs, if no external amplification is used. (As in say, in a handheld portal device.) If external amplification is used, there there will be no difference in volume, but the sound quality should be much higher; unlike those sound boards which put out a digital PWM signal which then has to be put through a low-pass filter to smooth it out before amplification, my board as an AB amp on it which puts out a true analog signal.
(Those sound chips put out around 0.5W. 2W is 2x as loud because you need 4x the power to get twice the volume. That’s just how our ears work.)
In regards to other specs, I don’t have a lot to go on, but:
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I can tell by looking at his board that the voltage regulator on it is probably capable of putting out less than a third the current of the one on my board.
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It looks his board can animate 2 large leds and 12 smaller leds and you can choose how they animate, but I cant tell if you can adjust the brightness at all, and it looks like you need to solder tiny surface mount resistors onto the board to make the smaller leds work. My board can drive 48 leds out of the box, over 200 with expansion modules, requires no resistors, no soldering, and has 256 levels of brightness control on each LED.
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It sounds like his scripting is limited to changing the way the leds animate when some trigger occurs. I suspect there may be only a single button or reed switch which triggers the various animations.
My board has 12 I/O pins, 6 of which are analog. To these you can connect switches, knobs (pots), servos, or 3V Power Modules for controlling REDACTED. It also has two chips onboard for controlling 48 leds with 256 level brightness control. By writing simple scripts, you can read your digital and analog inputs and animate your leds, move your servos, trigger your power modules, and play sounds.
- His board is designed for you to solder things to it permanently. My board has terminal blocks for attaching the battery and speaker, and pin strip headers so you can plug and play in a reconfigurable manner that requires minimal soldering.
Regarding price, my boards will be slightly more expensive than those saber boards, and around the same price as buying a pack light kit, a thrower light kit, and a sound board w/ distortion fix - $150.
But my board will do so much more.
The saber board doesn’t have enough LED outputs to drive the pack, never mind the thrower. One of my boards could drive both. The saber board also can’t drive servos, so is useless for a trap.
And the individual pack/thrower light kits aren’t configurable. And you have to use those DPDT switches to make them work with the sound modules. And you’d need a ton of them to drive a video game pack and would have a hard time getting them to work together. With a few expansion modules you could drive an entire video game pack easily. Also, you know how Hyperdyne has that heat up / cool down effect where the speed of the cyclotron and powercell changes with use? You could totally do that with this.
Couple more tidbits of info:
On the left side of the board, you’ll see four pins next to the power switch and LED. Those are for connecting your own external power switch and LED which bypasses the switch onboard.
You could use this for connecting an illuminated power switch like the ones I used on my RGB PKEs. You don’t need a resistor for this LED, and you can use any sort of switch you like. It does NOT need to be a bulky / expensive one capable of handing the 5A power supply, because the switch merely tells the 5V regulator to turn on.
Also, here’s a peek at the schematic:
That’s unfortunate.
I was expecting around $50. (Though without knowing the parts used, I can’t exactly justify why I think it would be around $50).
As another comparison.. how would it be better than an Arduino with a wave shield or LED driver shield? (or any other shield)..
Arduinos typically are $10 - $40, and shields are usually under $25. I understand its purpose built to do specific things (light, sounds and motors) but how can a $150 price be justified compared to the abundant level of cheap alternatives?
This is just my opinion. But if you are looking to get rich off of a design like this, do it based on volume, not price. If doing a kickstarter, aim your goal to be a number that can realistically get you production for cheap on a large scale. Perhaps that goal is $10,000-$25,000? The lower your goal is, the less likely people are going to try and promote the project to reach the goal… especially if its already met the goal early on. On my latest Kickstarter, I set the goal to be $5,000.. knowing full well it would probably go higher. If I had set the goal higher, I might of gotten more excitement and promotion for people to make the project go higher faster.
Trust me. Even if it means just breaking even. Set your price at a level that makes it irresistible. In a sea of lowcost microcontrollers, make yours stand out. Its perfect for props, lights, sound effects, things around the home.. neat gadgets, toys, cars.. etc.
But… at ~$150 I won’t be getting one (but I will chip in $$ to help the project). But $75? Maybe. $50 definitely. Lower? Maybe I’d get two or three..
If you do want any help to make your Kickstarter a success, feel free to send me a PM.
I have no idea how this sort of thing works, so these might be dumb questions.
I have a pack/thrower l kit coming from R4DEVO, (http://www.gbfans.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=15321) would your kit be compatible with theirs as a solution for sound? Or would that be redundant?
So your board can use one push button switch instead of a DPDT switch to tell a light and sound to go on at the same time?
I am also curious about what would need to be turned on and off rapidly with the 3v power module. A rumble/vibration function? With servos, then essentially the board could run everything you need a trap to do. (Matty features in a built trap)
Are you also writing software to go with the board? It would be nice to have some examples of programming or templates to set up lights, sounds for a pack or whatever prop you are making.
The short answer is, it would be redundant.
The long answer is, without seeing a schematic, or looking at the circuit closely, I can’t say anything for certain.
I see they have pins for a future sound kit, it might be possible to attach that to my board to trigger it, but it would not make a lot of sense to do that. You’d just end up with a mess of wires defeating the purpose of an all-in-one solution.
You may be able to connect the LEDs to my kit though. It looks like they’re common anode, which is the usual way of doing things. You would just need to assemble a short cable to take the 2 rows of pins and make them into one row, plus one pin for the anode.
Correct.
Right again. Pulse width modulated vibration motor speed control. But that’s only half of it. There’s something else you can connect as well that needs 3v.
Yes, I will be providing examples. I will also be providing scripts for specific props like the proton pack, which you can modify as you see fit. The code will be very simple. The board is Arduino compatible, so technically you could program it in C, but that’s way too difficult for most people to do, especially with all the stuff that needs to go in there to read the SD card, play the sounds, and update servos. Also beginners usually have problems understanding how to combine two things like an LED which blinks with reading inputs and moving a servo at the same time. They will put a DELAY(1000) statement in there to pause the led for 1 second, but that will stop the execution of the entire program. My scripting language won’t even have a delay statement. It will have timers. TIMER[5] = 0 resets the timer, IF TIMER[5] > 0.5 triggers an action if half a second has elapsed. There will be one script that runs once on boot so you can initialize some stuff, and another which loops continuously, in which you can take actions based on different inputs.
Could it be that my decision to wait on a sound kit has been a wise one?