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Author Topic: WINDOWS: Ultrasabers Launcher with Diamond Controller UPDATED 01-11-2018  (Read 141586 times)
Obi Wan
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« Reply #30 on: March 26, 2017, 07:45:35 PM »

I have a Diamond saber on order that I placed 3 days ago and am excited for it to arrive. Reading these posts has been very interesting. I wonder if that driver loading error is something unique to Windows 8/8.1 or if it will present itself on Windows 10 which I am running. I guess I'll find out soon. Either way thanks for posting your experiences and solutions so far. I will post also when I receive mine and start playing around with it. I am also very much hoping there is a way to get the 16 swings and clashes to load to the saber along with the multiple power-ons. It would be great if Emory or one of the mods could post here in regards to these questions/issues.
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"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine"
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Lord Bladewraith
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Either you like Star Wars... Or you're wrong.


« Reply #31 on: March 26, 2017, 09:44:53 PM »

That's true. Im probably one of the first customers to get my hands on the diamond and immediately start tinkering with it so we are still very early on in the new diamond era. I wish I could make a video and actually show you guys what Ive done already, but, well, like a dummy I was just spinning my new saber around and smacking stuff with it and I accidentally smashed my phone to tiny bits. I felt very stupid needless to say lol

Thanks for sharing your experience and progress. I think you're definitely one of the early adopters on the Diamond. It sure seems to have a ton of potential. I'll have my first Diamond ordered here soon - just trying to decide myself which saber I want it on. This is a whole new level compared to Emerald, with all the options and potential it has, so I'm pouring a lot of careful consideration into which saber I want to get this on. This thread will be a valuable resource to me should I run into any trouble. Point to you, good sir.

I have a Diamond saber on order that I placed 3 days ago and am excited for it to arrive. Reading these posts has been very interesting. I wonder if that driver loading error is something unique to Windows 8/8.1 or if it will present itself on Windows 10 which I am running. I guess I'll find out soon. Either way thanks for posting your experiences and solutions so far. I will post also when I receive mine and start playing around with it. I am also very much hoping there is a way to get the 16 swings and clashes to load to the saber along with the multiple power-ons. It would be great if Emory or one of the mods could post here in regards to these questions/issues.

Hey, congrats to you on your order. Another trailblazer! Good for you.  Which one did you order?

I'm on Windows 10 as well and feel confident it will all work out. Looking forward to deciding on one myself. With Spring and Summer ahead of us, I'm looking forward to going out in my backyard and trying out all the new movement and sensitivity options, not to mention the color gamut available. I have two Emerald sabers now, and they work fine with Windows 10, so I'm confident we'll be ok.
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My Top 3 Favorite Sabers: Electrum Wind, Emperor's Hand and Shock LE

Gorobulus
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« Reply #32 on: March 27, 2017, 01:11:27 AM »

Thanks for sharing your experience and progress. I think you're definitely one of the early adopters on the Diamond. It sure seems to have a ton of potential. I'll have my first Diamond ordered here soon - just trying to decide myself which saber I want it on. This is a whole new level compared to Emerald, with all the options and potential it has, so I'm pouring a lot of careful consideration into which saber I want to get this on. This thread will be a valuable resource to me should I run into any trouble. Point to you, good sir.

After another day of playing with it, I have to say its truly awesome and everyone should get one if they can. Yes getting the new US launcher to install is a bit tricky, but Ive detailed how to get around what I think will be the two most common issues. I think with windows 10 the only thing you will have to worry about is getting the unsigned drivers to install, as I believe windows 10 will already have Visual C++ installed.
There is a bit of a learning curve with the new US launcher, but it isn't that bad and you will start getting the hang of it fast. You learn more with every new thing you try to do. It really is limitless.
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Dark Mantis-Blazing red-Obsidian V4
Chosen one- Obsidian V4/Emerald driver
Dark Monarch-Diamond controller

Obi Wan
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« Reply #33 on: March 27, 2017, 10:13:41 PM »


Hey, congrats to you on your order. Another trailblazer! Good for you.  Which one did you order?

I'm on Windows 10 as well and feel confident it will all work out. Looking forward to deciding on one myself. With Spring and Summer ahead of us, I'm looking forward to going out in my backyard and trying out all the new movement and sensitivity options, not to mention the color gamut available. I have two Emerald sabers now, and they work fine with Windows 10, so I'm confident we'll be ok.
I ordered the Archon V2.1 with Diamond. I hope it arrives by the weekend. I also have a Chosen One CE with Emerald/Obsidian v4 and it works fine on Windows 10 so I hope Diamond will also. I had an Archon V2.1 with Emerald/Obsidian v4 that I just sold to a friend a few days ago. It's a versatile hilt that I had a few different Obi Wan and Luke sound fonts installed on it. I'm looking forward to getting these fonts with the stabs and spins installed on the Diamond when it arrives.
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"If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine"
   -The Force will be with you, alwaysl-

Deep
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« Reply #34 on: March 29, 2017, 05:12:25 AM »

- Visual C++ Redistributable might need to be installed on some machines: this is specified in the readme.txt file that is open automatically after installation, and also the visual c++ installation link is provided there.
- **Windows 8 users only** Installing the unsigned driver on Windows 8 requires a special procedure: until we get the driver signed, the workaround can be found here: http://www.craftedge.com/tutorials/driver_install_windows8/driver_install_win8.html
- Up to 15 sounds allowed for Swing, Stab, Spin, and Clash instead of 16: again up to 15, not 16.
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Emory "Deep" Harris
www.ultrasabers.com

JediXIX
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« Reply #35 on: March 29, 2017, 07:32:49 AM »

Thanks for sharing your experience and progress . . . This thread will be a valuable resource to me should I run into any trouble. Point to you, good sir.

Agreed . . .

Gorobulus, I've been reading all your experience so far, and, I also want to thank you for sharing this with us all . . . points  Smiley

Counting down the days till I make my Diamond order  Grin
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Gorobulus
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In time you will call me master


« Reply #36 on: March 29, 2017, 07:36:38 AM »

- Visual C++ Redistributable might need to be installed on some machines: this is specified in the readme.txt file that is open automatically after installation, and also the visual c++ installation link is provided there.
- **Windows 8 users only** Installing the unsigned driver on Windows 8 requires a special procedure: until we get the driver signed, the workaround can be found here: http://www.craftedge.com/tutorials/driver_install_windows8/driver_install_win8.html
- Up to 15 sounds allowed for Swing, Stab, Spin, and Clash instead of 16: again up to 15, not 16.



Oh 15. That explains it lol. I kept trying for 16 and it crashed the board. It also crashes the board if I try to add more than one poweron sound so Im assuming only one poweron sound per font? Can you confirm this? Thanks.

PS. Also for anyone wondering, since Im doing all the stupid, crazy stuff to see what the board can do, crashing the board is not the end of the world. Theres a diagnose function on the US Launcher that lets you restore all factory presets the saber comes pre loaded with. Yea you start from scratch, but hey Im doing all this so hopefully you guys wont have to.
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Dark Mantis-Blazing red-Obsidian V4
Chosen one- Obsidian V4/Emerald driver
Dark Monarch-Diamond controller

Gorobulus
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In time you will call me master


« Reply #37 on: March 30, 2017, 01:59:46 AM »

Man can you do some crazy S**T with this thing. So I had a 10 second long lockup sound to work with, Red as the main blade color. I set up a whizzing fast lockup effect cycling in each of the other LED's at 2 second intervals. And I would start bringing in one LED as I was fading the other one out and I ended up with all these amazing passing colors as the LED power levels cycled across each other and flickering at warp speed. Truly amazing. I used something like 75 points to make it all happen lol. Its just crazy what this board can do. There is nothing else like it.
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Dark Mantis-Blazing red-Obsidian V4
Chosen one- Obsidian V4/Emerald driver
Dark Monarch-Diamond controller

RSX Engineering
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« Reply #38 on: March 30, 2017, 06:14:45 AM »


On a related note, I wonder what the extent of "fully configurable firmware" is. It was said on the data sheet.


Actually, the data sheet says "Fully configurable and firmware upgradable through Ultrasabers Launcher". I think "fully configurable" is self explanatory. The firmware is the software that runs on the board itself, so "firmware upgradable" means that you can use the Launcher to upgrade to the latest version. This way you won't get a static product: as long as the firmware is up-to-date, your board will have all the latest bugfixes and improvements. Just keep an eye on the "Main" tab in the Launcher when you connect the Diamond, whenever there's a new firmware available there will be a notification there. Then you press "Firmware update", wait a little bit and... your board will be upgraded!

Marius.
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RSX Engineering
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« Reply #39 on: March 30, 2017, 06:22:48 AM »

Well, I think its more likely that it can already do 16 and I just haven't figured it out yet. As far as the powerons, Sidous no mercy has like 8 powerons. I loaded about 5 of them into the poweron tab and it did let me add them, but when I wrote to board it only took the first poweron. Now that doesn't positively mean you cant have multiple poweron sounds. It may just mean I haven't figured it out yet, much like having 16 swings and clashes. Im hoping Emory sees our little convo here at some point and chimes in on some of this stuff.

It can do 15 but only on Swing, Clash, Spin and Stab (an older version of the datasheet said "16", but that was a mistake we corrected). On this version, you can only have one sound for PowerOn, PowerOff, Idle hum, Force and Lockup. If you assign an effect with several sounds to an action that only supports one (like the PowerOn), it will just ignore everything but the first sound.

Marius.
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RSX Engineering
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« Reply #40 on: March 30, 2017, 06:31:57 AM »

I wonder if that driver loading error is something unique to Windows 8/8.1 or if it will present itself on Windows 10 which I am running.

It's only for Windows 8. This is a temporary issue, until we get the driver signed, and Emory posted a workaround.
For Windows 10 you don't need to install a driver at all, it's built into Windows. Only W7 and W8 need an external driver.

Marius.
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RSX Engineering
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« Reply #41 on: March 30, 2017, 07:13:34 AM »

Yes getting the new US launcher to install is a bit tricky, but Ive detailed how to get around what I think will be the two most common issues.

Sorry for the trouble you went through, we should have provided more info to begin with. Thank you for sharing your experience here and let me at least explain to you what's with those two most common issues.

1. The driver, which is only needed for Windows 7 and 8, is yet unsigned. We started the signing process but it's not entirely in our hands and apparently it takes quite a time to complete, so, since we had the board ready for shipping, we figured we won't let you guys wait, even if it's gonna be a little tricky at first. Let me assure you that, apart from having to unlock unsigned driver installation on Win8 and getting some scary warnings, there's nothing harmful to your computer in that driver. It's a general purpose VCP (Virtual COM Port) driver that's actually included in Windows 10 - unfortunately it took Microsoft quite a while to realize that driver is needed by default (MAC did this many years ago).
2. Visual C++ Redistributable is needed in order to run the latest version of the Launcher. On most systems it is already installed, with Windows or some other applications, but, as you found out, it might not be. For that situation, at the end of the Launcher installation, we open a readme file which gives you the link to the Visual C++ installation package.

You had the misfortune to run into both of these issues. Again, sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your efforts. I'm glad you didn't stop at the first trouble and came to enjoy the new Diamond Controller. As you keep playing with it, you'll find out it has more potential than first meets the eye, a potential that a guy like you will probably appreciate. Enjoy!

Marius.
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RSX Engineering
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« Reply #42 on: March 30, 2017, 07:28:45 AM »

Ive pretty much figured out how the lighting works. You can cheat a lot on things like pulsing and lockups by just creating a couple of flickers and then setting it to play back multiple times. The trick is timing the amount of light playblacks to be the same as however long the hum/lockup sound is. There is a limit to how many times you can playback a light effect(100 times) so for really long hums(Sidious no mercy for instance has a hum in excess of 20 seconds) you may have to create more than a couple of pulses to be able to get it to last as long as the sound.

Hint: The Idle hum and Lockup effects are played in a continuous loop anyway, so you don't even have to set the number of repetitions to more than 1. The sound and light loop independently (meaning the light effect restarts as soon as it ends, regardless whether the sound ended or not), so even if the sound takes 20 seconds and the light takes 0.1 seconds, they will play repeatedly regardless on the number of repetitions. Again, this is only for Idle hum and Lockup, which play in loop. On all other effects are one-time-events, as soon as the number of repetition ends, the lights will resume to the Idle hum effect.

Marius.
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JediXIX
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« Reply #43 on: March 30, 2017, 07:41:00 AM »

Excellent information Marius . . . and welcome to the forum Smiley


Any ideas when a Mac version could be ready for us ?
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projectno253
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« Reply #44 on: March 30, 2017, 11:29:00 AM »

Actually, the data sheet says "Fully configurable and firmware upgradable through Ultrasabers Launcher". I think "fully configurable" is self explanatory. The firmware is the software that runs on the board itself, so "firmware upgradable" means that you can use the Launcher to upgrade to the latest version. This way you won't get a static product: as long as the firmware is up-to-date, your board will have all the latest bugfixes and improvements. Just keep an eye on the "Main" tab in the Launcher when you connect the Diamond, whenever there's a new firmware available there will be a notification there. Then you press "Firmware update", wait a little bit and... your board will be upgraded!

Marius.


Oh I see, I misread the data sheet. Can't find it either but I'll keep searching. Edit: I found it, http://www.ultrasabers-uploads.com/Diamond/Diamond-Datasheet.pdf for anyone looking for it.

 
It can do 15 but only on Swing, Clash, Spin and Stab (an older version of the datasheet said "16", but that was a mistake we corrected). On this version, you can only have one sound for PowerOn, PowerOff, Idle hum, Force and Lockup. If you assign an effect with several sounds to an action that only supports one (like the PowerOn), it will just ignore everything but the first sound.

Marius.


It's too early to ask, but will multiple sound slots be put in for those other effects with a future update? Also strange to see only one lockup. While that makes sense, Obsidian had multiple slots. Is it even possible for those effects to have multiple slots? Or even is it possible to get into the board's programming to change those parameters...I can't imagine it would be that easy
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