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moorecreative
07-03-2016, 05:37 PM
I built my first custom saber with "cool looking parts" that my brother and I collected through highschool. When my son asked me what that box was in the closet of my childhood bedroom, we pulled them out and I finally put together my first saber two or three years ago. But until the Kickstarter and ASP program, I had no idea that there was a community doing this and building the most impressive sabers ever!

Before I ask for help, I have to start by saying thank you to everyone in the community here for being so awesome. I'll try to give back wherever I can!

I'm working on my first set of electronics, though, and I didn't follow or think of NovaStar's tips on building logically and testing along the way, so now i'm stuck... when I plugged everything together, I had the sound of the speaker give the start up sound two or three times, but not fully, like it played a second or two and then stopped, but that was as soon as I put in the battery. After that, pressing the button and trying different elements hasn't worked. I tried a combination removing the light on the momentary switch but that didn't help.

Now there's bunches that I'm puzzled by and I'll post back as I test each part as individually as I can, but let's start with the questions and the picutres

For a tight fit and some organization, i'm working it all into a part that I ordered from Shapeways that was 3D printed for these parts/items
http://www.shapeways.com/product/RHX9S6V44/all-in-1-1-quot-id-sabers-krs-hilts?optionId=59698629

I ordered the prewired part for the NB3, but I wanted to use the smaller jumpers so I replaced... though in action, i'm not sure they really consume any less space... anyhow, the prewired set came wired with a Red line leading to the pair with the Orange...

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BUT, the wiring that came with the LED that I ordered came a little differently than I'd imagined...

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it is a Green + Green, with White FOC and the wiring two wires combined into one Red and then one black as a pair and then one single wire for the FOC. So my first question was, doesn't that need to be a pair? But I guess that the red is over in the other set... so it's a single... OK with me, but do I need to do something with this red coming off of the prewiring?

anyhow, this is my full setup now...

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and this is my wiring diagram of what i'm trying to achieve

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I had read that with the battery being 3.7, that i wouldn't have to wire up resistors if I didn't want to and in early testing, when taping them up, the lights looked dimmer with resistors so I decided to leave them out (let me know how bad an idea that was...)

The other kind of custom thing here is that I wanted to have the lighted anti vandal momentary switch, and I wasn't sure where to get another line of +/- from so I made a Y splice, but made it with connectors so I could remove it or swap as needed. Was that an OK idea? or does that diminish the power to the main LED or cause a problem?

At the moment I'm looking for help and some eyes on the wiring (for what you can see, I know it's tough... i can add specific shots where it helps)... later, after a round or two of me trying to troubleshoot, I may be asking the forum for who I might send it to for some fixing if I get too stuck!

Thanks again,
Ryan

moorecreative
07-04-2016, 03:18 PM
OK Folks, Fourth of July weekend, perfect time for this project... I spent the first two days of the long weekend working on this and was really bummed that it wasn't working... really wish I had thought of the prudent steps of testing each element as you go that Novastar has outlined... now I know!

SO, I at least thought that I could follow it in breakdown of the different elements so here are the tests that I did:

Test 1. Test the Vandal Light - it works

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Test 2. Test the Vandal Switch action - it works

Test 3. Test the Green LED - it works

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Test 4. Test the Y shape splice - Branch A - it works
Test 4.5 Test the Y shape splice - Branch B - it works
Test 4.75 Test them both together - it works

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Pretty cool to see two lights! It dawns on me that with enough wire I could power a two sided saber from one switch!

Test 5. Test the FOC white and it comes on too!


Next test???

At this point, i thought that all i can do to test next is to start taking apart my wiring and soldering to work on testing the individual wires connected to the Nano Biscotte V3... MAN I did not look forward to that, So i looked back to my wiring diagram to make sure I'd tested everything that I could first...

Here's my wiring diagram again where i've now recorded the tests

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You see the one thing that I realized I could still test?

MY BATTERY

It had been working earlier in the day yesterday... but I still needed to test it. I put the battery into another unit and it was DEAD

In another tense second, I put the good battery into the unit with the soundcard and KRACKLE-VROOOOOOOMOOOOMMMMMMMMMM !

Whoo Hoo! There was nothing wrong with all that wiring and time spent, the battery had gotten burned or had drained!

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Greenie
07-04-2016, 11:36 PM
Well done. Glad you got it working. Lesson learned: always check your power supply first. ;)