Thursday, August 20, 2009

Tadao Luxe Mp3 Board, D.C. Challenge USPL


The Luxe represents a unique paintball marker due to its use of a speaker and voice audio clips for general operation and changing settings. While it would be relatively easy to do an OLED board for the Luxe, it would probably require stripping out the audio component (i.e. the speaker) to make enough room for the screen on the left side of the marker.

I decided to take a completely different approach and expand on the audio features. Why not make it possible for you to put your own sounds or music on the board, so that you can completely customize the interface?

Introducing the first mp3 player and removable micro SD memory card built into a paintball circuit board:

The design is based on my new Ebisu Series, which uses an RGB LED for status indication and provides support for the Tengu USB interface for firmware updates and settings modifications. A micro SD flash memory socket allows the use of up to 16 GB memory cards, which contain the mp3 files for every sound that is used on the board, be it for boot up, shut down, eye status, settings, and so forth. Players at last month’s SC Village USPL may have noticed that Rodney Squires from Dynasty had a Luxe that was playing the Windows boot and shutdown sounds. He was using one of the Tadao Luxe prototypes.

Any song or sound file in .mp3 or .wav format can be used by simply renaming it to the appropriate filename that is recognized for each specific sound on the board. Copy it to the memory card, plug the memory card into the Ebisu Luxe board, and that’s it.

Like the recently released Ebisu AKA board, the actual firing code is based on the Yakuza software, giving it the full selection of modes, settings, and other features found on the Yakuza Series.

Release date? Hopefully before World Cup.

On another note, I will be attending the USPL in Virginia at the end of August. If you need upgrades or technical support, you can find me with the Bob Long techs.

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