Tron Legacy - Sam Flynn's Identity Disk

It's all coming along a lot quicker this time.
Over a week ago I finished the first 3 video's on the Arduino sketch and today I finished and uploaded the last video. As I progress I will of course create more video's on the sketch.

I also created a video about ripping audio from a video file using VLC and editing the audio using Audacity.
After uploading I did remember I forgot to mention how to cut a specific section of audio from a file. Please check the Youtube link in the video description as that will explain the process.

The videos on the sketch and the audio ripping/editing have been added to the playlist I created for this project on my YouTube channel.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyythBBSchB6DWGi_5Xz2ogSqaS3vKtYN[/video]

Please check out my channel on YouTube and subscribe if you want to follow allong as I might post videos later that won't always be mentioned in threads on The RPF.

Also created a account on Twitter and Instagram: RiCor_Net
Both will be getting more content in the future. It's easier for me to just upload a single picture there with a short status update. My website and The RPF will then get the bigger updates with more details but at a longer interval.

Also made some more hardware progress. The LED's have been installed in the top section of the disc to represent the holographic emiters seen in the movie.
I'm continuing to work on hooking up those LED's to the Feather M0 board and incorporating them in the sketch so I can trigger them with one of the buttons or together with something else. A soon as they're hooked up to the M0 it'll all be software controlled a.k.a. flexible

Some pictures of the new LED's being installed:
I used hot glue to affix the LED's to the plastic holders by using using some inside the plastic holger before pushing the LED all the way down.
Adter inserting them in the metal holders I used hot glue again to fix it all in place.


After this I solder everything together in series with the 270ohm resistor between the LED and the postive wire. Heatshrink made everythign neat.


I calculated the resistors based on 3,7V but the M0 actually outputs a regulated 3,3V. This turned out to be a good thing because I feel the resistor brightness is better now
Check out video "#6 - How to determine LED Forward Voltage / Forward Current" on my YouTube channel for more information.

propmaster2000 said:

Allowing the batteries to discharge below a certain "critical voltage" causes them to puff up and not able to charge again.
How are you controlling this max "discharge" limit?
Does your disc electronics monitor this lower voltage limit before it becomes critical, then remove the batteries from the circuit
for battery safety?

Click to expand...

Integrated PCB (protection circuit boards) were introduced 10+ years ago on li-ion and certain li-po to prevent over charge, short circuit (or over current) and over discharge voltage monitoring with cell cutting. The used li-ion above have this, just like the ones I've used in my disc. The HW that is being therefore has no need to monitor it unless you want to send an audio or visual message to the user (which my audio board does by monitoring the voltage and scale it on a bargraph or trigger a file)

Great work Ricor, I'm happy to see your disc spinning ! thank you for sharing your progress.

wow this is absolutely brilliant! I will follow this project for sure, congrats man!

Hi erv,
Thanks for the reply,
Can you show a picture of the LIPO batteries you use with the built in "max discharge voltage" circuit?
I would like to see what I am looking for. I usually use the flat 3.7v 75-80mah batteries.
I know they have external protect circuits for "over charge" (battery chargers) and "discharge limit" protection, but
if they come built in that would be great.
Thanks.

erv said:

Integrated PCB (protection circuit boards) were introduced 10+ years ago on li-ion and certain li-po to prevent over charge, short circuit (or over current) and over discharge voltage monitoring with cell cutting. The used li-ion above have this, just like the ones I've used in my disc. The HW that is being therefore has no need to monitor it unless you want to send an audio or visual message to the user (which my audio board does by monitoring the voltage and scale it on a bargraph or trigger a file)


Great work Ricor, I'm happy to see your disc spinning ! thank you for sharing your progress.

Click to expand...

Whoops, missed the comments. Being on holiday and getting busy with work didn't help


Thank you erv.
I'm very glad I'm getting there ^^

Cool to read about your solution to monitoring battery life.
I have been working on writing a sketch and got that working. However it still needs some work as I found that it displays the correct voltage on the terminal monitor when hooked up to my disc but it doesn't work correctly when I power the Arduino from my bench power supply and simulate a low battery voltage.
I am currently making a video about it to share what I've done so far, hopefully i'll be able to put that online later tonight.
For now i'm going to leave it but I do intend to get it working later on as I would like either and audio or visual queue when the battery is getting low.
As always, any pointers/tips from you or anyone else is welcome.

As you already indicated I don't have to worry about discharging the batteries to far. I kinda forgot about that but when I was checking the datasheet for my batteries I remembered that I bought Li-Ion batteries with a built in protection circuit that cuts off the voltage when it reaches 3V.

@propmaster2000 the exact batteries I used in this version of the disc are the Emmerich LI14500.

These batteries have overcharge, overdischarge and overcurrent protection. But I do believe, as erv indicated, that alle batteries that are "protected" (have protection circuitry) have these features. I did intentionaly look for that after I reversed engineered the hardwarem setup of erv's disc and started looking into the different parts.

Darthy said:

wow this is absolutely brilliant! I will follow this project for sure, congrats man!

Click to expand...

Thank you Darthy. Glad to hear that!
Stay tuned for more making goodness

propmaster2000 said:

Hi erv,
Thanks for the reply,
Can you show a picture of the LIPO batteries you use with the built in "max discharge voltage" circuit?

Click to expand...

he actually used Li-ion, not lipo. I tend to use li-ion as much as I can as they are safer thanks to their safety vents

I would like to see what I am looking for. I usually use the flat 3.7v 75-80mah batteries.

Click to expand...

That capacity would be totally unrealistic here even with a 35 discharge lipo from R/C, a single pixels uses 60 mA in white, that's 11+ amps required on my disc (I had to reduce brightness a bit to be able to use 14500 cells)

I know they have external protect circuits for "over charge" (battery chargers) and "discharge limit" protection, but
if they come built in that would be great.
Thanks.

Click to expand...

Actually, all PCBs are "external". The ones that come with the li-ions are so thin that they add .5 to 1mm to the bottom of the cell and are hidden by the heatshrink. On lipo's they are installed as a tiny strip next to the battery tabs under the kapton tape.

I finally got around to uploading a video about the battery monitoring sketch I mentioned in a previous update. It’s actually a voltage meter that turns on a red LED when the voltage drops to a set voltage. Unfortunately it’s not yet working correctly when it’s not hooked up to my computer.

My guess is that when it’s connected to my computer the power from the USB connection messes with the reference voltage. When it’s only hooked up to my bench power supply and I simulate the low battery voltage the red LED does not turn on when I get below the 3.2V I set as the “low voltage” point.

For now I am going to leave the battery monitoring part for later as I want to get the rest of the animation and sensor stuff working. I will return to it later as I would like to have a low battery indicator.
As this is one of the things that I started messing around with for the first time in the world Arduino sketches it is one of the things I need to learn a bit more about / tinker around with more.

Should anyone have ideas or see an error I made I would be very glad to hear it!

The video update about this can be found here:



And also a update concerning my plans for the disc;
I have come to the realization that I will be adding my Adafruit Feather M0 Bluefruit back into the disc as a second board.
The reason for this is that I noticed that the disc animation (especially the blade animation) runs considerably slower when the Music Maker is active vs. when I just run the animation without sound.

I am going to work on getting a serial link going between the two Feathers. After this I will move the Neopixel strips and the “Holographic” LED’s over to the Bluefruit feather. Then the Feather M0 Basic Proto will only handle the buttons, sensors and the Music Maker FeatherWing.
The Feather M0 Basic Proto will then control the visual animations by triggering the Feather M0 Bluefruit via serial commands. When that is working I will continue on with getting stuff like the clash animation going. I recently ordered vibration sensor switches from AliExpress (medium and slow) since a wrecked the ones I bought from Adafruit. Once those arrive I will be able to try again getting that incorporated.

The great thing (at least I think so ) about integrating the Bluefruit M0 is that I will also regain the remote control I was hoping to get when I originally ordered the Bluefruit version to be the main (and only at the time) Arduino in this project.
Also this will give me more control options. This is important for me because I want to have the ability to also play music on the disc, specifically the Tron Legacy OST.
However this raises the issue of having to few buttons on the disc to control both the animations and provide “play/pause”, “next/previous song” and “stop playing”.

Of course If you just want basic functionality (animation + accompanying sound) the lack of buttons is not present since the 3 available buttons in my design should suffice. Then you can also use a Adafruit VS1053 Codec+MicroSD Breakout instead of the Music Maker FeatherWing that I am currently using.

I have ordered one today to do some testing to see if this could replace the Music Maker FeatherWing in future iterations of the disc. In the past Adafruit only had the Adafruit Audio FX Sound Boards which (for me) have to little storage which lead me to the Music Maker Featherwing at the time.
But now an SD-card version of a similar design is available. The great thing about this version is that it makes it easier to implement looping sounds and triggering short sound effects. You would need to wire up a few wires depending on the amount of sound effect employed. For a basic version of the disc (no music player shenanigans) this could however be perfect. Then 1 Arduino would suffice and it would only have to deal with a few buttons, sensors and the animation. You could still choose to use something like the Feather M0 Bluefruit LE so that remote control would br an option.
Ah, so many choices

Later this week I plan on posting a video on the Serial communication and also post and update concerning all the tools and parts used. That will probably also be accompanied by a video since I would like to discuss some rationale when it comes to the parts I chose and why I did so.

And another thing is working!
I went back to my voltage meter / battery monitoring sketch. This time I decided to use the voltage divider that is already on board the Adafruit Feathers.
See also the Adafruit learning guide for the Feather M0 Bleufruit (it's also on the Basic Proto version).

I figured out that I should have used a "float" in stead of an "int" for the low and critical voltage values.
That has been corrected and it's now working. So I will be having a "LOW battery" LED in the disc


I also modified the Feather. Just like on the Feather M0 Basic Proto I removed the JST connector.
This time I also removed the entire charging circuit from the feather since it's not used and the parts could be (and probably will be) usefull for a future project
Thank you Adafruit for including schematics and boardviews with your products



And another video:

Wow RiCor,

Thanks for the update, video referencing and links.

You indicated in the video you were a bit torn on whether or not you should use two LED's for the low battery indications
and critical....
Maybe use just one LED, then when it gets to the ''minimum low'' have it turn on, then maybe have it ''blink'' when it gets critical.
Just a thought.

Also, since you are monitoring the battery voltage using a "program" then the calibration (zero and span) should not be effected as it's own battery
supply diminishes...right?

Good job.

.

Maybe instead of using LED's to indicate low and critical battery levels, you can use a verbal warning and have it loop?
The voice chip runs as low as 3V.

"Warning, battery voltage is low, it is now at a critical level, shut unit off at this time".

Hey RiCor, I've been following your build for quite some time now and before that I was really into what Erv had done with his disc replica, but I have a few questions for you. I have wanted to make a replica disc of my own and I've had a deluxe Spin Master disc sitting here collecting dust, I just want to make a disc that functions like a replica lightsaber. I don't want the fancy music players, or the flash drive with stored pictures, I want something that with the click of a button the disc comes on with lighting and sound effects, flash on clash effects and idle spinning, swing sounds, and then turn off with a click of a button much like what Erv was showing at the beginning of his disc mod video. If I were to follow your build, what components would you recommend I use to achieve that?

Thanks in advance c:

Daring Doo said:

Hey RiCor, I've been following your build for quite some time now and before that I was really into what Erv had done with his disc replica, but I have a few questions for you. I have wanted to make a replica disc of my own and I've had a deluxe Spin Master disc sitting here collecting dust, I just want to make a disc that functions like a replica lightsaber. I don't want the fancy music players, or the flash drive with stored pictures, I want something that with the click of a button the disc comes on with lighting and sound effects, flash on clash effects and idle spinning, swing sounds, and then turn off with a click of a button much like what Erv was showing at the beginning of his disc mod video. If I were to follow your build, what components would you recommend I use to achieve that?

Thanks in advance c:

Click to expand...

I too am interested in this. I like the bonus features but I'd love to keep it simple too.

I just spent all day starting in on designing my own disk from scratch. I have been wanting to make one for a long time and finally got the kick to start working on it.



I'll be honest I did very little research before I got started. I was just about to close my computer then I thought I would look to see if someone else has done a build before. this post has been pretty inspiring. I'm a little daunted by all the work its gonna take. But really excited to know that it could turn out so well!

Justphred said:

I just spent all day starting in on designing my own disk from scratch. I have been wanting to make one for a long time and finally got the kick to start working on it.
I'll be honest I did very little research before I got started. I was just about to close my computer then I thought I would look to see if someone else has done a build before. this post has been pretty inspiring. I'm a little daunted by all the work its gonna take. But really excited to know that it could turn out so well!

Click to expand...

it's a fantastic prop replica project, I truly enjoyed any moment of building mine. Adding electronics and interaction scenario to it was of course cherry on cake, have fun with your build.

erv said:

it's a fantastic prop replica project, I truly enjoyed any moment of building mine. Adding electronics and interaction scenario to it was of course cherry on cake, have fun with your build.

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Thanks. I'm a novice when it comes to electronics so I will be a learning process for me. Any resources you could recommend?

What parts did you need from Soulinertia's retro kit?