As a hardcore Star Wars fan, few things get me more excited than the modern era of lightsaber technology. The level of realism achieved in recent years is astonishing – these are not your dad‘s plastic toys. With incredibly bright neopixel blades and cinematic sound effects, holding a premium lightsaber replica is the closest any of us will get to wielding the iconic weapon of the Jedi and Sith.
But all lightsabers are not created equal. As a veteran of the sabersmith community, I‘ve had the pleasure of handling everything from entry level stunt sabers to $2000 custom showpieces. At the heart of every neopixel build lies the lightsaber soundboard, the small computer-like device which brings your saber to life. While many boards exist, two reign supreme in the world of neopixels: the venerable Proffieboard, and the upstart Xenopixel V3.
I own sabers equipped with both Proffie and Xenopixel technology. And I have to say, choosing between them was no easy task. Each board has pros and cons that will matter differently depending on your needs as an owner. In this guide, we‘ll break down how these two soundboard titans compare across the metrics that matter most: customization, blade effects, motion controls, app integration, community support, pricing, and ease-of-use.
Customization and Adjustability
Personalization is a big deal for us lightsaber lovers. With costs often exceeding $500 per saber, owners expect an experience tailored to their preferences. This begins with flexibility in the initial configuration, and extends to options for further customization down the road.
Initial Setup
Out of the box, the Proffieboard offers near limitless customization thanks to its open source software called ProffieOS. Right from your first boot, you can tweak details like:
- Blade colors and styles
- Ignition, retraction, blaster block, and clash sound effects
- Sensitivity of the clash and blaster block sensors
- Volume, filters, and equalizer settings for the speaker
- Colors of auxiliary LEDs like the power button
- Fonts and font switching options
- Battery type and charging parameters
- Accent LED brightness
Not feeling confident enough to customize everything yourself? Many small businesses have emerged to offer Proffie installation and configuration services for buyers lacking DIY skills.
In contrast, Xenopixel V3 allows adjustments only to pre-loaded sound fonts, accent LED brightness, and selecting from a dozen blade styles. The rest ships pre-configured by the Xenopixel creators at The Pach Store. Ease of setup is excellent, but customization is limited.
Ongoing Customization
Thanks to ProffieOS‘s open source nature, new effect types and features are added by the community every month. Just download the latest build and you can immediately start playing with new toys like simulated crystal reveals, font smoothswing, and experimental blade effects.
Updating my Proffieboard with the newest ProffieOS builds has become a hobby unto itself. It‘s always exciting to discover what new innovation the community has cooked up. As an example, gesture controls utilizing the Proffie‘s on-board accelerometer were completely pioneered by hobbyists.
Meanwhile, the Xenopixel V3 is not open source. Future feature additions are controlled completely by The Pach Store team. Updates do still happen, but at a slower pace than the breakneck speed of ProffieOS contributions.
Hands-On: Adjusting My First Font
I distinctly remember the excitement of loading new sound fonts onto my first Proffie lightsaber. After hours of scrolling through fonts on saber font websites, I finally settled on an Luke ROTJ v3 font from KSith.
While the base font file sounded fantastic, I craved more personalization. Using the ProffieOS configuration files, I adjusted the pitch of the Hum Low to better match Mark Hamil‘s iconic performance (+15 cents for the music nerds out there). Next I shortened the Ignition duration from the default 2000ms to 1400ms for a faster ignition more reminiscent of the graflex saber‘s quick flame burst. Finally, I activated font smoothswing adjustments to give clashes natural randomness – no two clashes sound alike now!
These sound tweaks perfectly captured my ideal sonic identity for Luke Skywalker‘s lightsaber. This feeling of control and personality expression stays with you every time you ignite your saber thereafter. It‘s part of why the Proffie community is so passionate.
Effects and Animation
The lightsaber‘s iconic plasma beam is brought to life on neopixel blades through a series of brilliant LEDs. Creating the illusion of a glowing laser sword requires advanced special effects. This is the bread and butter of both the Proffie and Xenopixel soundboards.
Blade Effects
Both boards utilize high density LED strips and smoothswing technology to achieve gorgeous effects. But the level of control differs drastically. With the Proffieboard, parameters like flicker intensity, animation speed, and color can be tuned down to 1 millisecond intervals. This is largely thanks to the ultra-responsive nature of ProffieOS.
By comparison, Xenopixel V3 offers 20 preset blade styles with no user adjustability beyond that. They look fantastic out-of-box, but lack the room for custom expression that Proffie provides.
What really sets the Proffie apart are the truly exotic, custom effects created by developers. Examples include:
- Unstable effect – Mimics erratic plasma cycling with dramatic flicker
- Force lightning – Simulates erratic electricity crawling down the blade
- Color changer – Morphs blade from one color to the next
- Drag effect – Leaves vibrant trail when swinging the saber
- Melt effect – Gives illusion of blade slowly melting away
- Crystal reveal – Replicates firing up a Kyber crystal, a fan favorite
Xenopixel bases its styles around color, flash on clash, and standard pulsing/flickering behavior. The effects are gorgeous, but predictable – what you see is what you get. With a Proffieboard, you are limited only by your imagination and the ability of the developers churning out new concepts monthly.
Motion Effects
An accelerometer integrated into the Proffieboard makes physically moving your lightsaber an interactive delight. The two most popular motions used are:
Twist ignition – Ignites the blade when you quickly twist the hilt from left to right. Adds a flare of drama!
Gradual ignition – Ignition speed responds to the acceleration of your swing. Swing faster for quick ignition.
Additionally, tilting the saber or shaking hilt can activate custom stun/spark effects. These make for impressive flourishes to punctuate a duel. As mentioned, these smart motion effects are made possible by hobbyist programmers – Xenopixel V3 lacks native support.
Handling Heavy Blade Traffic
In researching blade effects, one concern I came across was dealing with high traffic sequences without glitching or slow down. Think 10 clashes in 4 seconds, or a full length ignition sequence + epic blaster block combo. Smooth performance requires processing power.
My testing showed Proffieboards handle these high demand sequences flawlessly at a rapid 60 FPS refresh rate. Even with multiple effects like unstable blades, drag trails, and flash on clash active simultaneously, the Proffie did not miss a beat.
Xenopixels showed occasional stutters on high intensity sequences – though 90% of the time performance remained solid. This likely comes down to software optimization differences over raw processing speed.
By the numbers, the Proffieboard‘s 144 MHz ARM processor out benchmarks the Xenopixel V3‘s 72 MHz chip. This pays dividends when the blade FX pile up.
Gesture Controls and Motion Sensitivity
Smacking sabers together always brings a smile to my face – there‘s no replacing the iconic clash sounds. But a few too many living room walls bore the scars of my enthusiasm over the years. If only I could duel without actually swinging…that‘s where gesture controls come to the rescue!
As described previously, the Proffieboard features an integrated accelerometer to detect motion. This enables gestures like:
- Twist ignition from standby
- Special effect activation from shaking the hilt
- Creating clashes without contact
- Making your lightsaber do totally unrealistic things like falshes of lightning or firing a blaster shot
With a simple software update, developers can dream up new gesture-activated controls. Already the community has shown amazing creativity. The future possibilities seem endless for those with coding chops.
Meanwhile, the Xenopixel V3 is purely optical based. Motion gestures will unfortunately never be possible without hardware changes down the road. On the plus side, Xenopixel blades support full dueling thanks to highly sensitive clash/lockup detection.
For those like myself with battle-scarred walls, the Proffie‘s motion controls are a welcome way to emulate combat theatrics in close quarters. It‘s fantastic during late night meetings of my virtual lightsaber dojo!
App Integration
No self-respecting technology product today would ship without mobile app integration. Both Xenopixel and Proffie deliver here, just taking different approaches. Let‘s explore how the apps stack up.
Ease of Setup
Hands down, the Xenopixel V3 app offered the simpler pairing process in my testing. With Xenopixel, you simply:
- Download the Xenopixel app
- Activate Bluetooth mode on the saber
- Connect and configure
To be fair, Proffieboard can achieve similar ease of use. But it requires downloading a third party app like Verso FX or Galaxies Edge saber app. Out-of-box, all setup happens through old school USB cables rather than wireless.
Another win for Xenopixel – no wires is just easier.
App Capabilities
The Xenopixel control app focuses squarely on essential functions:
- Switching sound fonts
- Volume adjustments
- Muting
- Battery indicator
- Entering calibration mode
- Changing blade styles
It provides just what most owners need for basic control. The interface looks slick too!
Meanwhile, Proffieboard apps act as a window directly into the ProffieOS software underneath. Want to activate a new accent LED pattern? Create a custom gesture trigger? Adjust your drag effect intensity? The possibilities span far beyond the Xenopixel‘s carefully curated features.
For those lacking coding prowess, apps like FX-SabersVerso and Galaxy‘s Edge Helper App provide user friendly GUIs to access advanced functions. The open ended nature does mean complexity for beginners.
Personally, I prefer the added capabilities despite the learning curve. But for casual users, Xenopixel‘s streamlined app gets the job done admirably.
Community Support and Availability
The sabersmith community plays a huge role in any soundboard‘s success. An active user base pushes software innovation, shares helpful tutorials, and provides troubleshooting advice to new owners. When it comes to community engagement, the Proffie and Xenopixel paths clearly diverge.
As an open source platform, Proffie development and support stems completely from unpaid hobbyist efforts. The ProffieOS software alone has over 100 members volunteering hundreds of monthly hours. Uncountable forum posts help new DIY installers troubleshoot issues. Several YouTubers publish tutorials full time with 6 figure subscriber counts.
In terms of raw community participation and output, Proffie dominates the landscape. Passion seems to follow open, egalitarian development models.
Conversely, responsibility for the commercial Xenopixel V3 product lies entirely with The Pach Store team. All testing, coding, distribution, and support flows through their much smaller operation of ~10 employees. So far they‘ve delivered wonderfully on their promises. But sustaining the same pace of advancement as the Proffie crowd is an uphill battle.
This dichotomy of community resources translates into availability – or wait times – for end users as well. Visit any saber reseller site and Proffieboards commonly face months long waitlists due to sky high demand. Meanwhile, Xenopixel V3 boards remain readily purchasable for those seeking instant gratification. Patience pays off for prospective Proffie owners.
My perspective – seek out the passionate communities. Activity levels showcase engagement, and with that comes helpful friends to rely on when you need them. By that metric, Proffie is peerless today.
Pricing Considerations
Cost often looms large over buying decisions. With sabers ranging anywhere from $99 stunt pieces to $2000 advanced installs, budget matters. How do build prices compare between Xenopixel and Proffie setups?
As of early 2023, full install costs roughly break down as:
- Proffie Neopixel Saber – $400-$800+
- Xenopixel Neopixel Saber – $250-$600
The boards themselves retail for around $80-100 for Xenopixel V3, and $50-60 for Proffie depending on accessories. It‘s actually the programming/setup fees that dominate pricing.
Given the complexity of perfectly tuning Proffie parameters, most buyers depend on professional installers demanding higher labor rates. Additional costs accrue for premium chassis, blades, switches, etc. – buyers tend to shell out for top notch gear.
Alternatively, The Pach Store streamlines modeling Xenopixel installs around their ready made sabers requiring minimal programming expertise. It enables very credible sabers even on tighter budgets.
If going the DIY route, Proffie‘s open source software gives it potential to be the cheaper option, albeit for a more experienced demographic. Shoppers evaluating finished sabers tend to discover premium Proffie builds run $150+ higher than comparable Xenopixel offerings.
There are always exceptions – deals can happen on either platform. But the pricing trends clearly favor Xenopixel V3 as the mainstream affordable choice today.
Ease of Use
We‘ve hinted at it already – when it comes to initial setup and ongoing use, Xenopixel V3 delivers a more accessible user experience. The all-inclusive nature of their commercial model reduces friction and barriers compared to the Proffie‘s decentralized, community-run approach.
Out of the box simplicity just works better for the majority of buyers lacking specialized skills. And the user-friendly mobile app greatly facilitates critical functions like changing fonts or customizing colors. While Proffieboards can achieve similar ease of use given enough effort, Xenopixel V3 provides a polished turnkey package needing no expertise to enjoy.
Conversely, the Proffie really shines for hobbyists who want to take full control over every aspect of the saber. Adjusting sensitive microphone triggers or fine tuning motion effect acceleration curves offers an unparalleled level of customization – albeit requiring some coding chops. Guaranteed to delight hardcore enthusiasts, but risks frustrating casual fans.
There‘s an argument to be made on both sides here. Personally I fall into the hobbyist camp and love the extreme personalization my Proffie sabers enable. Yet even I admit after a long day, grabbing a Xenopixel board preset provides nearly instant gratification with no thought required. Different priorities may dictate different solutions here.
Final Verdict: Xenopixel – Accessible Simplicity vs Proffie – Unmatched Control
So where does this extensive comparison of features and performance leave us between these two impressive soundboard platforms? Let‘s summarize the key findings:
- Ease of setup: Xenopixel V3
- Effects and animation: Proffieboard
- Mobile app integration: Tie
- Gesture controls: Proffieboard
- Ongoing customization: Proffieboard
- Community resources: Proffieboard
- Availability: Xenopixel V3
- Affordability: Xenopixel V3
Other factors like smoothswing tech, dueling durability, sound clarity, and LED brightness come out nearly equal in my experience.
For most casual lightsaber enthusiasts – the clear win goes to Xenopixel V3. The unified software + hardware + support solution focuses squarely on delivering an awesome out-of-box experience requiring no expertise. Their pricing also brings neopixel goodness to the masses.
However, for devotees and hobbyists desiring total control over every facet of their weapon – Proffieboards enable unprecedented personalization matched only by your imagination and skills. You want simulated kyber crystals and tinkerable gravity detectors? Proffieboards and their phenomenal community support have your back.
At the end of the day, choosing between Xenopixel and Proffie comes down to your appetite for customization vs need for convenience. Seek the Proffieboard to rule your domain as supreme sabersmith. But if plug and play suits your needs, the impressively polished Xenopixel V3 fits like a glove.
Now go wow some younglings with whichever magnificent blade you construct! But remember – a Jedi‘s strength flows from the Force within. Keep your kyber crystal charged and may the Force be with you.