Ground Zero: Blades: Simple
Video Coming (maybe) Soon
The simple blade type is usually associated with “Tri-Star” LED configurations, but it has quite a few uses.
Click the “+” on the bottom left of the “Blade Arrays” page (after adding and selecting a blade array) to add a new blade. You can click the dropdown that appears at the top to switch to “Simple.”
LEDs
You’ll see 4 identical “LED #” boxes that can be configured, with a dropdown for each which reads “<None>” at first.
LED Profile
The dropdown specifies the “LED Profile” which describes how the channel of the simple blade will respond according to different colors being generated by a blade style.
Basic Profiles
The basic “Red,” “Green,” and “Blue” profiles behave exactly as you’d expect. If the blade style lights up that color (or a mixed color that uses that color), the channel will turn on proportionally.
Cree Profiles
The “Cree” profiles are setup specifically for Cree brand LEDs, specifically the XP-E2’s usually used for Tri-Star in-hilt sabers. They expect you to specify the value of the resistor placed in-line with the LED, which helps the Proffieboard underdrive/protect the LEDs if you used too low of a resistor value.
Power Pin
Once you’ve decided what color(s), based on the profile, your channel should respond to, you can select a power pin to drive that channel. These are usually one of the bladePowerPinX pins, which correspond to the LED1-6 MOSFETs, where the negative side of your LED connects to the MOSFETs, and that’s how they’re turned on/off and brightness-controlled.
Alternatively, for very low-power LEDs (<20mA), you may choose to connect the positive side of your LED to a “Free” pad (or other general IO) on the proffieboard, and negative directly to GND. The pin names for the other pads can be found on the proffieboard website for your specific board version.
Brightness
At the very bottom, you’ll notice you can also choose to dim the brightness of the blade as a whole (for all channels). Tangentially, the “Dynamic Blade Dimming” feature may be interesting to you.
Other Uses
While the simple blade is mainly used for Tri- or Quad-Star LED setups, it can also be used for simple single-LED setups, or for more niche things like a rumble motor (where then the concept of “brightness” is just rumble strength, and you just match the color profile and blade style to any arbitrary color) or to power on/off items like a BT module.
Simple blades can be used to function like an on/off/dimmer for basically anything that is directly powered, not just LEDs!