So, as I had mentioned I have been pretty obsessed with lightsabers lately. Shortly after my last post about having bought 2 used lightsabers off craigslist(one completely broken, another with no sound), I finally decided on parts and ordered some from The Custom Saber Shop(speakers, battery holders, switch, and vented pommels) and from Custom DarkWolf Sabers(LEDs, circuit boards). Then I had to find the time to put it all together. Been super busy, so that took almost a month haha
First thing, was that I needed to replace the pommels on the sabers I got. They are solid pommels, for sabers with no sound. So I went with the most affordable pommels from The Custom Saber Shop.
New pommel on the saber, old solid pommel on the right.
I had initially thought I might be able to drill enough holes through the original pommels, but in practice it would have been a bunch of skinny long holes, which is not really good for transmitting sound.
Before I even got my parts, I knew I wanted my saber to be green. My hilt is black, so I decided to sand it down to give it a two tone, weathered look.
Tools and parts
The single color sound board, for my saber.
The RGBW sound board, which will go into Sophie's saber.
All wired up! Hadn't soldered in over a decade!
I struggled a bit with the soldering. They kept getting disconnected once I would put everything in the saber. And it took me a while to figure out how the switch was to be wired (old switch only had 2 terminals and it was going straight to the battery, this one had 4 since it's an illuminated switch and going to the board instead. First time I got it wired up, it wouldn't even power on. And I didn't have time to troubleshoot further. So it sat there for like 2 weeks waiting for me to have time to work on it again. Took it all apart, rebuilt it, and same thing. Wouldn't even power on. Again. Not gonna lie. I was regretting a lot of things at that point. Much to learn, I still had. I started troubleshooting, and noticed right away that I couldn't measure any voltage even coming into the motherboard. Tested from the battery pack and nothing even coming out of there. Took out battery, and it tested fine. Inspected closely, and the battery holder is not the right size or something, because there's a gap between the negative terminal and the battery. Doh!
Notice the gap at the top!
So I just did this:
And then bam! The electrons are flowing finally!
During the surgery
It was a bit of struggle to get everything in the saber, but nothing some persistence couldn't fix. At last, my saber was ready!
The final product!
And here's how it was before:
It feels good to build your own saber. I am glad I went that route, instead of just buying it all done. Here's a super short, crappy video of it. Better videos to come haha
I am pretty excited with it. I want to do some light painting with it, take some pics with it, maybe a video or something. It will be fun! And here are some more pics, just because:
So I've been playing indoor soccer here in Portland for almost 2 years now. It's the futsal variety. 5 on 5, 1 player being a portero/keeper. It's smaller than the standard indoor soccer fields. And the rules are slightly different. But overall, it's still fútbol, and I love it. I play once a week. And we never practice haha. It's a vegan co-ed team, because it's Portland and these things happen here. Team name is Killer Tofu. I started playing forward, but we eventually lost our portero and so I started playing portero, Jorge Campos style, so I score sometimes. And sometimes they score on me because I am playing way too far upfield. High risk fútbol!
Sophie looking bored while I play.
Recently, we have to change facilities to one that is further away, which sucks. It used to be a mile from the house, and now it is over 3 miles. These are the new courts, although they will be changing a lot soon. They will be adding nets to divide the courts and redrawing the court lines to regulation size.
It will take some getting used to, to play on hardwoods instead of the fake grass/turf at the old place. But futbol is always fun! :D
We signed up for Moviepass a couple months ago or so. It was a royal pain getting it going. Geli got her card like a month before me for some reason, even though we ordered it same day. And their customer service sucks. I emailed them like 5 times, no replies at all. Their phone number is just a machine saying to email them. Their chat service never gets back to you. It was a pain. But, the actual service, is quite good. We pay $10/mo for it. And you can go to any 2D, non-IMAX movie you want, at almost any theater, for free. One movie per day. So we've been going to the movies way more lately. We try to go at least once a week. Some weeks, we go more though. Last week we went twice. And it's painless. You check in on the app when you get to the theater, then you pay with the credit card they send you. Goes without a hitch. Haven't had any issues getting in.
We usually research a movie, watch trailers, etc before going. Last Sunday though, it was spur of the moment after a comedy show that ended early(9pm). So we just watched the next movie that was playing at the nearest theater, and holy crap. What a total waste of our time. We watched Tragedy Girls. Throughout the movie, I kept expecting it to "get good". IMDB has it at a 6.7, which for the genre, is decent. But nope. Never got good. There was no like-able characters, no character growth, all very flat. No real storytelling either. Not really funny. And I'll stop there, just in case any of you want to go see it, though I don't see why you would. So we will have to do more research in the future, because even though that was free, I felt ripped off. My time matters, and that was not even remotely good. We've also recently seen Mother!, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, and some others that I don't remember right now.
Anyway, we like Moviepass. And we like being able to go to more movies. We'll just have to be more choosy in the future, or know that we will see some pretty bad ones also haha
