Ground Zero: Preset & Blade Arrays

A blank config will have no preset arrays and no blade arrays, so we need to add some, and probably explain how they’re used in the first place.

Preset Array

Let’s switch to the “Presets” page of the editor.

In the top left, you’ll see the “Presets Array” section. Click “Add.” We’ll start with just a single presets array, which is typical for most configurations. You can call it something like “presets,” and click “OK.”

We’ll now switch to the “Blade Arrays” page of the editor to understand what just happened.

Blade Array

The Blade Arrays page of the editor looks pretty similar to the Presets page, so once again in the top left “Blade Array” section, click “Add.”

First, you can choose to give a Blade Array a name. This name is used as the folder where save files are stored on the SD card for this Blade Array. You can leave it empty (“[default]”) for them to go in the “root” of the SD card, which is typical for the default blade array. If you had multiple blade arrays, then you’d give each of them descriptive names.

Then, you’ll see there’s a few more options than with the presets array. The ID is a value which the Proffieboard uses to determine which blade array to use when you have multiple. There’s a few ways Proffie may use this value, “Blade ID,” “Blade Detect” (uses the NO_BLADE value), and some props support manual functionality. The ID is a fairly complex topic of its own, so I won’t go too in depth here.

Finally, we’ll need to select a Preset Array that this blade array links to, and now adding that array before should start to make more sense. Of course, select the “presets” array you created from the drop-down.

Why?

The way this works, is that each “Blade Array” contains a series of blades for that array. This means you can swap between hardware configurations. An example of why this might be useful is switching between WS281X blades of different lengths, or for a removable core which connects to different internals with different accents.

For each Blade Array, it is also linked to a preset array. Multiple blade arrays can be linked to the same preset array, if you want to keep them all the same, but if we take the removable core example, it means that if you put the board/core into a certain character replica, you could have a preset array with fonts and bladestyles for that character.

For a lot of more simple setups, you’ll usually just have one preset array and one blade array, but now you know why it’s set up this way, and what you could do if you get adventurous. :)

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