Blog — electronics

My first install of Simple Blaster OS is going in a Hasbro E-11 conversion.  I’ve been meaning to do a E-11 blaster for while and just haven’t gotten around to it. I actually have two Hasbro E-11 blasters now.  The video below goes over the resin printed parts I’m using.  I really liked the old DoopyDoo kits but they are not available any more. Plus I wanted to get a bit more accuracy by resin printing the parts. So I’ve made some modifications to E-11 parts I’ve found online to both fit a Hasbro E-11 and accept the electronics.  ...

7/115/2023 Update - Revised connection diagram and code    I've been having a blast building Star Wars blasters.  Adding the electronic sound and lights has not been as fun.  There are options available but all of them are bit more complicated than what I have been looking for.  Proffieboards are great but they are expensive and currently hard to find.  FX Blaster OS is free but requires specific hardware and just won't run on any old Arduino board.  I wanted something that could be easily loaded on just about any Arduino board and with simple functionality.  When I build a...

The Unicron Speech and Light Kits are finally available!  You can purchase them here for $165 https://cchobbyfun.com/products/haslab-unicron-speech-and-light-upgrade The kits allow you to add speech and light to your Haslab Unicron kit. They can be controlled via bluetooth from an iPhone or Android device. The kit comes with most of the electronics already installed in an easy to mount box.  You can see the instructions here. Here's a quick demo and an overview of some changes made in the production kit:

A number of people contacted me expressing interest in a kit of the sound/speech mod I did for my Haslab Unicron. I'm open to the idea but I wanted to first explain the details of how the mod is installed.  I posted a video to make it clear:   I think the most important thing to understand is that installation of the electronics requires you install the upgrade kit to split robot/planet modes.  It's not super hard but I know a lot of people are sensitive about mods to their purchases. That being said if there is still interest, I...

Got the sound and light installation for my Haslab Unicron complete.  You can read the first blog post here. The final install keeps most of the electronics inside Unicron with only the power bank and a USB cable exposed in the rear.  The final setup has a seven segment WS2812B led strip, Circuit Playground Bluefruit (CPB), DFPlayer Mini, a 3" speaker and a compact power bank for the power.  The code relies on the existing Adafruit Bluetooth Lowe Engergy (BLE) libraries for Bluetooth control. This lets me control the sounds and lights from my iPhone or an Apple Watch.  I'm...