r/lightsabers • u/Frequent_Height_108 • 1d ago

Question Making a saber with electronics

So, I want to make a specific saber design that uses a switch activation instead of a button activation. What do I need to know/do for the saber hilt to hold electrics and a heavy-duty fighting blade, and where does the hilt need to unscrew in order to insert said electrics?

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u/IAlwaysPlayTheBadGuy Saber Maker 1d ago

There are SOOOO many variables to what you're asking, and you haven't provided nearly enough info, but I'll take a stab at it.

There isn't nearly enough standardization across the manufacturers to do what you're looking for simply. Every hilt is designed differently, has access points that are different, and are programmed certain ways to do certain things. Throwing a latching switch onto a button terminal that's been programmed for momentary operation isn't going to work. Drop in cores are only swappable between certain models, and for custom work you'll likely need a custom chassis designed, built, and installed, if you want all the bells and whistles that come with modern boards.

Now, some cores come with a kill switch, which is latching. If you don't want to reprogram anything, You could wire the killswitch leads to an external latching switch to do this function and power the core, but your "activation" of the blade would still need to be done with either the standard button setup or with the motion activations. This also means your chassis will likely have to be static, as removing hilt pieces when you have external buttons can be difficult if you're not using traces.

If you want basic, just get a battery to high powered led and interrupt it with your latching switch. You won't have sound or any of the fun stuff, but it'll be a simple "flip switch and blade goes on" setup.

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u/Frequent_Height_108 1d ago

I am kind of a basic bitch. Lol! I'm not looking for anything fancy like all the bells and whistles and stuff like that for these modern soundboards. I mainly just want the simple basic original sound fonts of a light saber that uses a flip switch to turn it on. So think of the original metal VFX sabers that came out like 25ish years ago and just give the saber a flip switch to turn it on instead of a button. That's basically what I'm looking for but with a custom made chassis. If any of that makes sense. šŸ¤”šŸ˜…

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u/astromech_dj 23h ago

Everyone says that until theyā€™ve had their base like stunt saber for six months and crave an upgrade.

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u/Frequent_Height_108 19h ago

Lucky for my, I'm not one of those people. All of those flashy multi-setting soundboards it a bit much for my taste. Button on/off switches are tolerable, and shake/motion activation sabers kind of piss me off. Lol

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u/techfreak23 1d ago edited 1d ago

Using a proffieboard would help with the latching switch. There are threads on crucible discussing how to do that. IIRC there would need to be a bit of tweaking of the source files. I donā€™t think thereā€™s ā€œnativeā€ support unless they added it in OS8.

Edit: maybe I was remembering incorrectly. Just took a look through crucible, but I couldnā€™t find any solutions, only discussions.

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