I finished the back scabbard earlier this week. I might add a bit of silver paint to one of the parts, but it's good to go as is. It carries the sword very nicely on my back and I can pull out & sheathe quite easily with the right technique.
I worked on the blade software most evenings this week, sometimes rather late into the night. At one point, when I had the settings menu system done, the program space on the Trinket was 94% full, so I optimized the code for size and got it down to 78%. This gave me enough space to add all the display modes the settings supported, including some pretty advanced stuff. As of this morning, I have a good "1.0" version that takes 95% of the free program memory on the Trinket. The remaining 250 bytes or so should be enough to add one more display mode - the groundwork for a scrolling color animation on the blade is already there.
The last bit I did this morning was to make the settings save automatically to EEPROM on the chip, so that if I change the battery, operation is resumed with exactly the same settings as before power was lost. There's a way to reset the EEPROM to defaults, but that currently requires a USB connection to a computer.
The settings allow brightness and color selection (primary & secondary colors), single, dual and "peaking" color modes. Particle animation can be turned on and off. For dual color mode, the position of the color change is adjustable. A second menu has settings for the hilt & sheathed mode, allowing to choose between blade off, dimmed or fully on when the sword is sheathed. You also get to choose what the hilt display shows when sheathed and not sheathed. Hilt modes are: all dark, color matching the primary blade color or showing the current battery level.
I feel like I managed to cram quite a lot of functionality into less than 5kB of program memory. Good fun, bringing back memories of the 1980s... The exo suit is going to have a Pro Trinket, so memory shouldn't be as much of an issue.
I'll try to take some photos this weekend, but it's time to start working on the suit now.
I worked on the blade software most evenings this week, sometimes rather late into the night. At one point, when I had the settings menu system done, the program space on the Trinket was 94% full, so I optimized the code for size and got it down to 78%. This gave me enough space to add all the display modes the settings supported, including some pretty advanced stuff. As of this morning, I have a good "1.0" version that takes 95% of the free program memory on the Trinket. The remaining 250 bytes or so should be enough to add one more display mode - the groundwork for a scrolling color animation on the blade is already there.
The last bit I did this morning was to make the settings save automatically to EEPROM on the chip, so that if I change the battery, operation is resumed with exactly the same settings as before power was lost. There's a way to reset the EEPROM to defaults, but that currently requires a USB connection to a computer.
The settings allow brightness and color selection (primary & secondary colors), single, dual and "peaking" color modes. Particle animation can be turned on and off. For dual color mode, the position of the color change is adjustable. A second menu has settings for the hilt & sheathed mode, allowing to choose between blade off, dimmed or fully on when the sword is sheathed. You also get to choose what the hilt display shows when sheathed and not sheathed. Hilt modes are: all dark, color matching the primary blade color or showing the current battery level.
I feel like I managed to cram quite a lot of functionality into less than 5kB of program memory. Good fun, bringing back memories of the 1980s... The exo suit is going to have a Pro Trinket, so memory shouldn't be as much of an issue.
I'll try to take some photos this weekend, but it's time to start working on the suit now.