Kant Lavar
03-03-2011, 04:23 AM
I know I kind of vanished, and it's quite likely only a handful of you will actually remember me at all. But when Jay-Gon mentioned in the RL Great Lakes Base forums that the TCSS sound board had been released, and it was a version of the Petit Crouton... well, let's just say I made time like I'd been in the Millennium Falcon.
So. Last summer, while at the Grand Rapids Whitecaps Star Wars Night, as I was about to show Jay my MHS saber, Perseverance, I was treated to an incident of the magic blue smoke. My LED leads got crossed and now I have an Ultrasound 2.5 board that only makes sound. (Of course, being the high-speed, low-drag wanna-be-Jedi/former-Army-troop, I was prepared and had an MR Luke I toted around for the evening. But that's neither here nor there.)
I have two other US boards, one of which I didn't get to work in the first place, and has bits of wire hanging off it. The other has a chip of a corner missing from the PCB. Near as I can tell, it should still work - none of the components seem to be missing or damaged. But all else being equal, for my "flagship" saber, I'd like to keep it as cutting-edge as possible. Thus, I'm starting planning to take this:
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/8459/p1000455r.jpg
- and make it better... stronger... faster.
Well, better, anyway.
What this will entail: Replacing everything from the gear section down. The saber is already disassembled, so no worries there. To house the switches, I plan on grabbing a style 2 activation box (http://www.thecustomsabershop.com/Activation-box-style-2-P355.aspx) and filling it with all the trimmings. I was smart enough to stash away a few extra AV switches back in the day, so that's one part I won't need to purchase.
Two problems present themselves, however. One, after mounting the PC board in a similar manner to the Ultrasound - on the 2AA battery pack, itself mounted on a speaker mount - I'm not certain a 5-inch section, as I had it before, will fit the speaker mount, board, battery holder, and the terminal ends of the two switches and power jack - and, just for kicks, since Tim isn't doing powdercoating, I figured instead of a fluted extention, I'd use some of those internal grips (http://www.thecustomsabershop.com/Grip-style-1-P556.aspx). Again, a potential problem arises - will the grips interfere with the speaker mount? I suspect not, or if they do, a few moments with sandpaper here and there should iron most problems out. And, just because it's closer to my initial idea, replace the pommel with a number 10 (http://www.thecustomsabershop.com/MPS-Pommel-style-10-P589.aspx).
After some time spent reading the PC user manual, making some notes, a touch of math, and some PowerPoint Ranger-ism, and I worked up the following:
http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/9728/saberupgrade.png
Anyone see anything wrong, or can pass along some best-practices from actually having worked with the PCs, and/or the internal grips?
EDIT: Well, I can tell one thing that's wrong already - this is why you don't do diagrams while under the influence of insomnia, campers. The DPDT switch looks like it's wired to be normally closed, where it should be - and only can be, IIRC - normally open. Just a schematic error, and easily fixed on my computer. I just don't feel like re-uploading the image at the moment - I really should be shutting this infernal machine off and trying to get a little sleep...
So. Last summer, while at the Grand Rapids Whitecaps Star Wars Night, as I was about to show Jay my MHS saber, Perseverance, I was treated to an incident of the magic blue smoke. My LED leads got crossed and now I have an Ultrasound 2.5 board that only makes sound. (Of course, being the high-speed, low-drag wanna-be-Jedi/former-Army-troop, I was prepared and had an MR Luke I toted around for the evening. But that's neither here nor there.)
I have two other US boards, one of which I didn't get to work in the first place, and has bits of wire hanging off it. The other has a chip of a corner missing from the PCB. Near as I can tell, it should still work - none of the components seem to be missing or damaged. But all else being equal, for my "flagship" saber, I'd like to keep it as cutting-edge as possible. Thus, I'm starting planning to take this:
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/8459/p1000455r.jpg
- and make it better... stronger... faster.
Well, better, anyway.
What this will entail: Replacing everything from the gear section down. The saber is already disassembled, so no worries there. To house the switches, I plan on grabbing a style 2 activation box (http://www.thecustomsabershop.com/Activation-box-style-2-P355.aspx) and filling it with all the trimmings. I was smart enough to stash away a few extra AV switches back in the day, so that's one part I won't need to purchase.
Two problems present themselves, however. One, after mounting the PC board in a similar manner to the Ultrasound - on the 2AA battery pack, itself mounted on a speaker mount - I'm not certain a 5-inch section, as I had it before, will fit the speaker mount, board, battery holder, and the terminal ends of the two switches and power jack - and, just for kicks, since Tim isn't doing powdercoating, I figured instead of a fluted extention, I'd use some of those internal grips (http://www.thecustomsabershop.com/Grip-style-1-P556.aspx). Again, a potential problem arises - will the grips interfere with the speaker mount? I suspect not, or if they do, a few moments with sandpaper here and there should iron most problems out. And, just because it's closer to my initial idea, replace the pommel with a number 10 (http://www.thecustomsabershop.com/MPS-Pommel-style-10-P589.aspx).
After some time spent reading the PC user manual, making some notes, a touch of math, and some PowerPoint Ranger-ism, and I worked up the following:
http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/9728/saberupgrade.png
Anyone see anything wrong, or can pass along some best-practices from actually having worked with the PCs, and/or the internal grips?
EDIT: Well, I can tell one thing that's wrong already - this is why you don't do diagrams while under the influence of insomnia, campers. The DPDT switch looks like it's wired to be normally closed, where it should be - and only can be, IIRC - normally open. Just a schematic error, and easily fixed on my computer. I just don't feel like re-uploading the image at the moment - I really should be shutting this infernal machine off and trying to get a little sleep...