I’m pretty sure the boat my ZD Toys sabers were on sank, as I’m still waiting…
While waiting I found these IC+RGB Lightsabers on Amazon! I’ve seen this form factor in baselit several times, but these have real RGB strips in there, so for $36 for TWO I snapped them up!
They’re AWESOME. Like a mini lightsaber with real neopixel blade styles and decent sound from whatever speaker is in there. They flash on clash, have smooth ignition and some sweet preons. They even sorta respond to aggressive swings. The problem? No smooth swing, no customization, and mostly rudimentary blade styles. They just don’t have that proffie goodness.
I’m having trouble disassembling as the hilt is one piece. I think the answer is the undo the hex screws and push the chassis all the way to the other side of the hilt so that it clears whatever retention plate is inside the hilt.
I really want to save all the parts for a drop in upgrade. Has anyone seen these before or know how to get stuff in and out of them?
I’ve messed with some of the more budget sabers like that before, but none of them were as fancy as to have a pixel blade, I had to put my own light strips down the blade…
I’ve ordered a set of these as I am also curious as to how these are constructed, so we’ll see if I can get it apart!
They’re 7/8ths so there would be a lot of options if I could get them apart. Going in from the hilt side has been problematic cause it’s so deep in there. I think the retainer on the speaker is plastic so I’m gonna tug on that with a hook and see if I can get the guts out that way.
Just watched a video in the review section and it’s pretty obvious that they’re not scared of disney at all, they have multiple copyrighted tracks included, and I believe one of the preons uses one of the free Greyscale fonts lmao. very interesting as these things go, and a lot more capable than they usually are
I noticed that it used an ignition sound for a retraction effect though… strange…
I added a proffie for scale. The Star plastic is the but, then there’s the plastic ring with tab, then this exotic little speaker that sounds halfway decent. We can do a whole lot with this! I wonder how many pixels are in the blade…
oh, there definitely looks like there’s room for a proffie in there. good find! amazon said they were gonna be delivered yesterday, but have since still not arrived…
It’s 49 pixels and appears to be one-sided, but with good enough diffusion that it kind of wraps around. I was able to unscrew the plastic disc covering the speaker, partially unscrew the screws on top to push the switch assembly down in order to slide out the chassis, and it came right out without issue for me. This is a VERY small little saber and might be kind of humorous putting good electronics in it… We shall see
It’s an intriguing project and if I still had little kids around it would be awesome for them. My goal is going to be minimal parts as the challenge that I think makes it still fun to do. While we could replace the chassis and everything else, then we may as well have used a nice looking pipe as the donor hilt.
Oh, and there’s a coupler in the box. So… could end up being a small staff.
that integrated button is gonna make it a little harder to convert, though… all the other cheapo sabers I’ve worked on have had the same standard button
Yep, I’ve done the ones on the right there too. Though these are smaller than those. But still plenty of room in the provided chassis. As for the button and USB… I was considering using this board as a breakout by removing the ICs and other components that would interfere… but if I intend to be able to program without disassembly then that won’t work since this is a 6 pin USB C port. Might be able to rig up a 16 in it’s place, but then I may as well make a small Proffieboard sled to fit in to this slot (that’s the easy way and only salvage the standoffs and maybe the button.
I’m tempted to whip something up in KiCad that has the same dimensions and spacing that serves just as a breakout board for the proffieboard (keeps the button, usb port, standoffs, and JST connectors in the same place, but has pin headers on the other side that you can just slot the proffieboard onto and then solder on… The biggest issue there would be the shipping time though
That could be cool. I think something 3D printed makes it an easy way to both hold the Proffieboard and provide a mounting location for the other components. If I were doing a bunch of these a custom PCB would be worth doing for sure.
They invented a game along with their LGT/Nexus retrofits. 2 littles vs 1 BIG. It’s epic.
