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Light Organ mod - Most heavily moded Xplorer to date? (vid)
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Imterrible  





Joined: 13 Aug 2007
Posts: 530

PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 3:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

realuser wrote:
Your youtube video doesnt work. Could you like, upload it again?


Your computer doesn't work. Could you like, buy a new one?
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guran  





Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 88
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 8:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

piratetrips12 wrote:
I have an SG so I can't really follow your guide step-by-step, but I'm assuming it would pretty be the same process.

The SG is a bit different (easier actually), so it won't be exactly the same (concept wise the same of course). Luckily for you there are 4 threads in the 101 sticky that describe SG foot pedals. All excellent mod work. The one that in my mind most clearly shows the soldering points on the board is:
http://forum.guitarherogame.com/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=25838

And then there is another one describing how to make the socket and so forth.

Good luck
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guran  





Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 88
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 8:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

RiskyBusiness wrote:
Can you do this with the Kramer for the PS2? I don't have an Xplorer OR a 360.

I would assume so. I don't have a Kramer so I haven't looked inside it? Anyone who does, that can fill us in? If not, why don't you just open it, take some picks (overall, main circuitboard and telesocket) and lets have a look.
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Sesing  





Joined: 19 Jun 2007
Posts: 141

PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 10:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I want that Guitar!!!!!!!!!!
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MHagen41  





Joined: 04 Nov 2007
Posts: 35

PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 10:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

FretsOnFireGh2 wrote:
Could you go a little more into detail on the frets? I would love to have those and play at school for a Science project That'd be the funnest 100% I ever got in school ever. Not to mention my mom would totally pay for it since it's school-related. Please do elaborate. My main questions are:
1: Where do you get those transparent frets/how do I make them?
2: After I buy the diodes, what will I do with them?
3: How do I make them light up at the same time I hit the frets?
4: How would I make a switch to turn it off and on?

Thanks.


I was wondering basically the exact same thing. Could you please describe how you made the LED frets?
Thanks
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mikepalermo1  





Joined: 04 Aug 2007
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 10:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Could you make a tutorial on the FRET LED's? I would relly like to have thoose.
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The2NerdyOnes  





Joined: 09 Sep 2007
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2007 11:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Could you post a video playing One?
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Reyals  





Joined: 19 Jul 2007
Posts: 46

PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 2:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very impressive. I know first hand the trials of a LED mod. My controller is pushing over a hundred dollars right now, and I am not even close to being done. I have a few questions I would like to ask:

The response time on your light up frets is very quick. Seems a little quicker then mine. Are you using a SPDT micro or 2 seperate micros?

I am sorry if this was already asked/answered. What kind of power source are you using? That's alot of LED's to be powered off the controller alone.

Maybe the angle of the video is wierd but it looks like the orange fret is lighting up white/clear. Is there a reason other then avalibility of an orange LED?

Beautiful work though. Very cool mod.
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catzpurr  





Joined: 06 Oct 2007
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 5:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Is it possible to apply all these mods to an SG? Or a Kramer?
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guran  





Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 88
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 8:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The2NerdyOnes wrote:
Could you post a video playing One?

Frankly my One is so so, at best. with a 400-ish score, so I think that would be rather dreadful to watch. I have had a lot of request for vids with the guitar playing songs with more action, like Jordan or TTFAF, but I'm not good enough a player to make the songs justice.

If there was a really good player who wanted to make a video with the guitar, like HellAshes, or anyone else who could do a 100% Solo C on Jordan with lit frets, I would be happy to contribute the guitar for such an epic video.
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lukecantplay  





Joined: 01 Apr 2007
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2007 11:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What are you and you friend thinking of doing for the next guitar?
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guran  





Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 88
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 1:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

RiskyBusiness wrote:
Wow. That is crazy. ....Wow. I do have a question though. Can you explain HOW you made the star power footpedal? I have read the guides, but I can't comprehend enough as to how they did it. Thanks.

piratetrips12 wrote:
Could you please go into some more detail about the star power pedal? I am interested in making one myself.

Where you guys ok with the pedal explanation?
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guran  





Joined: 28 May 2007
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Location: Stockholm, Sweden

PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 2:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

All very good questions indeed...
Reyals wrote:
The response time on your light up frets is very quick. Seems a little quicker then mine. Are you using a SPDT micro or 2 seperate micros?

We have Single Pole Double Throw switches, but use them as Single Pole Single Throw. I am not sure, but I think, that when it comes to delay the largest delay in the system is the PIC, polling the switches at about 1 Mips. Whatever the delay is it is for sure less than what can be captured by the camera I was using.

Reyals wrote:
I am sorry if this was already asked/answered. What kind of power source are you using? That's alot of LED's to be powered off the controller alone.

Also a very good question. Power was probably our biggest struggle (along with heat generation, cooling etc.). As you rightly point out there is NO WAY you get this kind of juice from the USB socket. The diodes alone are ~2 A, and on top of that you have two cold cathode tubes. Regular batteries also do you no good. I first went to our largest electronics wholesaler and asked for their most potent battery. They charged me ~50 USD for a lead-adid battery (12V, 0,8 Ah) which turned out to be completely useless.



Even when fully charged it could not muster enough current to fire up both the cathode tube and one diod at the same time - The cathode just went weak. Furthermore after playing in lit frets mode for 3-4 minutes (so not even a song) the battery was already drained and the shine from individual diodes dramtically reduced.

By chance I one day stopped into a, RC flight hobby store (these guys are the shit when it comes to portable power, i must say), and walked home with this:



It is a Lithium-Polymer, 11.1 V, 2.2Ah, battery used for flying around 1 meter long chopper models. The main difference from my former battery (a part from the lifetime) is the peak current I can extract. The former battery went soft already at 0.5 A or so. For this new one the guy behind the counter claimed it could do 30 A(!). I highly doubt that. What is clear, though, is that even with my 5 diodes and two cold cathode tubes firing away I am no where near the limit of this badass battery. It also lasts for quite a while. Like almost an hour.

I highly recommend this battery for moders aspiring for powerful lighteffects. It also has the added benefit of exploding if you short-circuit it, adding an element of excitement and surprise to your soldering efforts.

Reyals wrote:
Maybe the angle of the video is wierd but it looks like the orange fret is lighting up white/clear. Is there a reason other then avalibility of an orange LED?

You are totally right. At those luminans levels there are no diodes who come in all five colors (what I have been able to find at least) - instead there is a yellowy-orangy color which is really neither or. What I have done (this was not present on the video though, so you are right in your observation) is to use a bit of orange plastic spot light film covering a white diode to act as the orange one, and simultanuously add a bit of yello plastic film over the yellow one to make sure it is really yellow. It takes down the luminans a bit (even though in theory it shouldn't) but it is not much, and they glow plenty as it is.
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guran  





Joined: 28 May 2007
Posts: 88
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 2:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

G-Rad wrote:
How much would you charge to build me one of these? lol

mikepalermo1 wrote:
How much would it cost for you to make me one of theese beauty's?

Holland wrote:
how much to make me one?

..no seriously...how much? for all the parts + labor. just for the lights...or hell..just for the lights in the fret buttons.

Husegun wrote:
3) Do you ever plan on making a production model for Sell?

I thought about this over the weekend. As you guys have seen the production cost if I where to build any more of these beauties is quite prohibitive. Judging from this thread and the comments on YouTube though there seems to be plenty of people who would want to buy them if they were at reasonable price.

What you should really try to do is to convince RedOctane (speak to Chris Vance of whatever...) and convince them to do a minor set of these as a promotional item or limited series. For them with their factory setup up and supplier relations, the production cost of something like this would only be say 20-40 USD more than the original guitar if they where to do a series of say a 100 or more. That I think you might be interested in paying.

I would happily supply all schematics blueprints, and whatever else they would need to build it, but they are the guys that have a factory in China, not me...
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guran  





Joined: 28 May 2007
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Location: Stockholm, Sweden

PostPosted: Sat Nov 17, 2007 3:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

FretsOnFireGh2 wrote:
Could you go a little more into detail on the frets? My main questions are:
1: Where do you get those transparent frets/how do I make them?
2: After I buy the diodes, what will I do with them?
3: How do I make them light up at the same time I hit the frets?
4: How would I make a switch to turn it off and on?

mikepalermo1 wrote:
Could you make a tutorial on the FRET LED's? I would relly like to have thoose.

MHagen41 wrote:
I was wondering basically the exact same thing. Could you please describe how you made the LED frets?


Ok, the lit frets. First of all, let me say, that if all you want is something that light up when you play there are many easier ways than ours. Three things in particular are tricky about our mod:
1) The diodes are inside the frets
2) The diodes are powerful as hell
3) It is an Xplorer

If you wanted to do this mod on say, an SG, with regular 20mA diodes, and would even consider to have the diodes sitting on top of the neck next to the buttons, this would be much less work. If this is what your looking for (even with the diodes inside the buttons) you probably want to try this thread
instead. It is a lot easier.

Nevertheless, I'll start off by explaining what we have done and talk a bit about how to make the mod more managable at the end

1) Making transparent buttons with diodes inside
We knew we needed new transparent buttons, partly because of the diodes, but also because we were putting in our own microswitches. Luckily for us, this type of stuff is what GrandMasterPimp does for a living, as a design lead for cell phones at Sony Ericsson. Because of this GrandMasterPimp has lots of machines at work that most of us don't have access to, like in this case an FDM 3-dimensional plastic printer. We CAD-ed new buttons in Rhino, built around the old buttons, but with a hole for the diode inside and the measures on the bottom changed to accomodate the new microswitch. We printed a couple and they came out like this:

[Hmmm... Can't seem to find one, have one here somewhere, will upload pic when I find it]

On top of this form-welded plastic button we put a cap of transparent pvc plastic (buy at any hardware store) which we just cut out and sanded down with a dremmel to make it a bit milky and to smooth out the the edges for easier sliding.

2) Powering badass diodes
For diodes we use Luxeon Lambertian emmitters 350mA. Here's a link if you want the detailed specs http://www.elfa.se/elfa-bin/setpage.pl?http://www.elfa.se/elfa-bin/dyndok.pl?lang=se&dok=7273.htm (Sorry it's in Swedish, but you should be able to figure it out from there). They go inside the buttons.

Issue number one is power. As described in the previous post we use a Lithium-Polymer battery with 2.2 mAh. Go to your local RC flight hobby store to get one.

Third issue is voltage-regulation / cooling. The diodes want 3.7 V. The battery supplies 12 V. If you try to use resistances to lower the voltage there will be a lot of heat involved. Likely enough to burn through the plastic of the guitar. Instead we use, an individual voltage regulator for each of the diodes.

3) Detecting button press on an Xplorer
Now we have a LED that can light up and glow. Only need to get it to glow with button press.

The Xplorer and the SG are very different. More different than they seem at first. You might even say that the SG is an analog controller, while as the Xplorer is a digital. Hence, why it is easier to do the mod on an SG.

On the explorer there are 8 wires going to the five frets which are used to communicate which frets are pressed. Some wires are shared between frets, some are unique (the orange fret has two unique wires). This is not the bad news. The bad news is, on the SG, when you press a button a circuit is closed and current flows through a wire. Detecting a button press is hence detecting current in a specific wire (you could almost plug your LED onto that wire).

This is not the case with the Xplorer. In the Xlporer signals (pulses) are going through all the wires all the time, and what happens when you press a button is that the pattern of the pulses change. From this traffic a button press is not an easy thing to detect. What you want to do instead is to insert some electronics "between" the buttons and the Xplorer wiring so that you can detect button press like on the SG, and once you do, connect the two appropriate wires on the Xplorer so that the button is also actually pressed in the game. What we did was, we got a couple of bilateral switches (like these http://www.elfa.se/elfa-bin/dyndok.pl?lang=se&dok=2013059.htm). We then took fret by fret:
A) Disconected the two wires (lets call them w1 and w2) the fret is using (splicing the wires if also used by other frets)
B) Inserted a positive voltage where w1 used to be
C) Took a new wire (w3) and soldered onto where w2 used to be
D) Let the new wire, w3, run into the bilateral switch control port
E) Hook w1 and w2 up with the two in/out ports on the switch
F) Power and GND to the bilateral switch

Now you it is easy to detect button press (it is whenever w3 is high), and you can use that to light up the diodes, either by connecting w3 directly to weak diodes, or by connecting w3 to the voltage regulation circuit of a megadiode. Both ways, the best part is, your Xplorer still works.

SIMPLIFICATIONS
There are several ways to make the lit fret mod easier. Lets look through area by area:

1) Getting the LEDs inside the buttons
The easiest way would be to chose to have the leds elsewhere (like somewhere else on the neck) i estimate this takes out half of the work involved. There are plenty of designs that would still look plenty cool with the LEDs else where on the neck

If you are hellbent on having the leds inside the buttons but have no FDM machine (if you do I would be happy to share our CAD-drawings), there are several options:
A) Mod the existing buttons - Flip them over, carve out the inner parts so you can stick a LED in there, Saw of the tip, and replace it with a bit of PVC, and lastly put a bit of cardboard over the bottom to ensure the button still functions
B) Make new buttons in PVC plastic. Sounds very difficult to me, but saw in a thread somewhere that someone has done it
Regardless there are several threads on transparent buttons.

2) Choosing LEDs, power and so forth
If your willing to have normal LEDs, like 20 mA or so, it saves you a world of trouble. No need for battery, as you can power it of the Xplorer it self, no need for voltage regulation circuitry. For sure it won't glow nearly as much, but in a completely dark room it'll still look cool (ours are maybe a bit overkill as they blind people even in a large fully lit room). Go to a well supplied electronics store and look at the brightness to see if you can live with something not so potent (maybe 2 pieces of 20mA per button or something)

3) Detecting button press
If you are decided on doing it for an Xplorer, you'll end up going the route i described above. If you have a choice, go for the SG. Much easier, no bilateral switches.

Closing words for the school science project. I think it's a fabulous idea that will be loads of fun. If you decide to do the entire mod the way we did it though, I think you're signing yourself up for an awful lot of work. After all we were two, and the whole thing took a manmonth or so.

If you could see yourself compromising on some of the complexities, i.e. doing it for SG, putting LEDs elsewhere or using less powerfull LEDs I think it will be a perfect project. Let me know which combination you feel most strongly about and we'll work out something that works. I can also down the line provide even more details on how to solder, what components to buy and what not, once we get there.

For now I am quite convinced that If you decide to go for it, your main problem will be the transparent frets with LEDs inside. You might want to check out some of the other threads on that to go a bit deeper already now for you planning.

Good luck to all of you, and I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.
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