Crazy Idea of the day: Theremin clash locations

Ok, so this might not work at alll.
But the idea is to stick an antenna in the blade and use an oscillating circuit, similar to a theremin to deduce clash locations. There are lots of reasons why this might not work:

  1. capacitance varies a lot based on what you hit
  2. theremin oscillators tends to measure how far from the antenna something is, not how far “up” the antenna.
  3. theremin oscillators are finicky

Here’s the thing though: When clashing two sabers together, the two fields will interact, and I’m wondering if it’s possible to leverage that to get clash distances somehow. If so, it might only work for saber-to-saber clashes, but that would still be something, right?

Also, neopixel strips might work as antennas… :slight_smile:

A frequency sweep in the right range might also reveal how long the blade is. :slight_smile:

I really liked the idea of putting a piezo sensor on the tip and base of the blade, and calculating position based off of wave delays. I’m not familiar with how a ther Amin works, but if it could be made to work with a single wire going up the blade that would be great. Only worry I’d have is interactions and noise from the led currents affecting the theramin wire? But like I said, not familiar with how theramins work. As an aside, I did find some transparent piezo film somewhere on google.