Wiring diagram for a NBV4 with extender?

[darthdarth]

Hi guys,

Finally got all the material (and time available, so I started the build.

I did mount the LED and the inner frame, The battery is in and I did put together the recharge port; so now I have basically all the wires ready to connect the board.

- Speaker wires
- Activation button wires
- Accent LED wires
- main LED wires (3 + 1 for the ground, which I tied together So I have one wire coming in from the LED assembly)
- Power wires coming from the recharge port.

Connection should be straightforward, since I tie all the negative together, which goes to the negative pad of the board; speaker wires go to the speaker pads, the activation button to the activation pad, and the accent LED goes to the small pad in the middle of the board (the one marked for the accent LED in various diagrams, not the 3.3V pad, otherwise I need the kill key because that LED would suck up the battery even when the board is turned off)

Now, from my understanding, the extender goes on the 3rd pad, which is the one used for the FOC feature; although I am not sure about how to connect it; does anyone have a pre-made working schematic that I can look at, to get an idea? Thanks!

[Tom Tilmon]

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Looks like negative and activation switch run through xtender from nbIV manual.

Tom

[darthdarth]

I thought that diagram was wrong, when I was looking at the manual.
Not sure why it has to go through the activation switch; I want to be sure that I do this right, since there is no turning back :)

[darthdarth]

This is what I did plan; not sure if that's how it should be though...

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In many examples, I see people setting up the positives together, instead of the negatives, which is weird to me. I am no hardware engineer but all the circuits that I have seen using Arduino for example, were showing that the signal is the positive.

Maybe the NBV4 is different and does not carry any voltage on their pads, beside the power one? Althought this is also weird, since a pin can be either high or low; so this means either there is full current passing through it, or none (unless you have PWM pins).

Trying to understand how this thing works :)

[Jay-gon Jinn]

The switch ground doesn't have to run through the power extender, it merely needs to return to the battery ground, which would be either on the battery/cell itself, the post on your recharge port if you have one, or through the ground on the PEx. Wiring it to the PEx may save you on space with your wiring, reducing the possibility of "spaghetti wiring" your saber.

[darthdarth]

I see; I am not much into electronics; I mostly write programs for microcontrollers, leaving the wiring to the people that know that well :)

Does my schematics works or do I have to change something? I did connect the switch to the same wire that goes from the ground of the extender, to the negative, so I think I am doing what you suggested.

[darthdarth]

Update: I did wire up everything, and....the LED assembly does not power up.

At this point I realize that the issue is in how the wiring has been done; the board power up no problems, although it won't power any of the LED; which means that either the extender is not working due to the wiring, or the issue is with how I did wire up the LED assembly.

From readings on the board, the L1, L2 and L3 sadly do not carry the voltage; which is why my LED won't turn on. I did wire together all the negatives instead of the positives, thinking that the signal and the current was on the L pads, while it is not.

At this point I have to take apart the whole thing and start from scratch; since I need to re-wire the LED from scratch, and use one wire for the positives and not the negatives. Also the extender and the wires are such a mess that I can't even close the case, which is disappointing. Expensive mistakes, but it was accounted for...

[Jay-gon Jinn]

The L pads on the board are the negatives for your leda. Those need to be separate as the board uses a common positive for the blade leds.

[Whosle]

Should have just followed the diagram in the manual.

The "act" pad is usually connected to a red wire, because it senses voltage supplied by the Negative of the battery.

Most microcontrollers work like that, so I'm not sure where the confusion is. It is programmed as an input.

The LED (L1 and L2) pads are output from the onboard mosfets. They are controlled by PWM (or similiar) from the controller.

The output on the L3 pad is simply a digital logic output (same signal to control mosfets).

Erv was clever enough to make the L3 a digital output for the neopixels, while also able to control a Mosfet gate.

When you have the power extender hooked up to the L3 pad, it then becomes a high powered output.

Just follow the diagrams supplied by the manual, do the math as described by the manual, and you should have no issues.

*edit: I realized that you can't have a digital logic also be a PWM , I actually have no idea what Plecter boards use as signals. Just know it works as the manual describes.

[Tom Tilmon]

L pads are all cathode. Returns. Negative leg from each LED goes to pads. Positives can all common up to the + pad.

[Whosle]

Tom ,

I am thinking in electron flow. The LED forces the flow from negative to positive. The emitter is the negative leg, and that's also the drain. Cathodes have a surplus of negative charge.

The activation pad is idle until you connect it to the negative of the battery.
Unless I am confuzzle-ing myself.

[darthdarth]

Thanks for the hints; I did learn the hard way that I should follow what is on the manual; although I can't just read it without understand :P


Most microcontrollers work like that, so I'm not sure where the confusion is. It is programmed as an input.
If you try to connect the positive of a LED to the + on the arduino, and the return wire on a pin set to high; most likely you would fry the LED. At least on the Arduino, all the pin out that can be set high or low, carry about 5V, which is why you can't just connect 3.3V sensors to these pins. Can't say about other MC, since I know mostly Arduino and clones.
I did assume that the L pads would carry 3.7v from the battery, hence my mistake. Glad that I didn't burn anything :)


L pads are all cathode. Returns. Negative leg from each LED goes to pads. Positives can all common up to the + pad.
That explain how the whole thing works; common + for power, negative for each L pad. I am curious to see what happen if you connect the negative from each LED to the ground. It should still work from my understanding, since GND and - are mostly equivalent.

[Tom Tilmon]

My Nano B IV Graflex Install:
http://i.imgur.com/1jJhr6G.jpg
Dark Blue Wires: Speaker
Orange Wire: Activation Leg (other part is commoned up with negative in saber)
Purple Wire: White Diode FOC/Green/Red Diodes on 5mm RGB LED that is lighting the crytal.
Light Blue Wire: Blue Diodes Main Blade Color (B,B,W tricree) Blue diode from 5mm RGB LED on Crystal Chamber
White Wire: Negative Feed from recharge port (cut off leg when kill key is in, commoned with other switch leg in saber)
Red Wire: Positive Feed from recharge port/LED Star. My common positive connects in here. I almost use the kill key as a wiring harness. Lots of room there.

As you can see though, by the time I get to the board, I only have one wire to each pad, makes things neater. This saber also has a crystal chamber with RBG LED. I commoned up the Red/Green diodes to a purple wire after resistors, that purple wire then is parallel with my FOC, and the purple from my main blade joins in with this one into a single wire going to the board. The blue diode from the 5mm RGB LED runs on a blue wire after resistor, and is then commoned up with main blade blue wire in hilt prior to bisquit. The red common wire from the 5mm RGB, the Red wire from Recharge port, and the Red Wire from my main LED are all commoned up to one red wire going to the bisquit. Keeps life simple. I common up all the + on the LED star, so I only have one red wire coming off the star. On my tri crees, I'll have one positive wire, and one wire for each diode on the star. On this saber, because the 2 main blade diodes were the same color (blue) I commoned them up after the resistor to a single blue wire...which merged with my crystal chamber blue lead into a single lead. That single lead is running the blue chamber LED, and both blue diodes on my star.

Tom

[darthdarth]

Awesome Tom!

How did you join wires together? I have virtually no space on top; especially because the resistors are so big and take so much space.

Also I have no idea where to put the extender; the bottom is busy since there is the recharge port; so I am not sure if I should "shrinkwrap" it and put it on top of the NB4 or have it float around.

I see that many of you did go for the route of one color; that will remove the need for the extender; so it is 3 wires less. I may just end up trashing the current led assembly and get a BBW led; to simplify things.

Thanks for sharing your setup!

[Tom Tilmon]

I join wires by twisting wires coming from the same direction, then soldering them together, then a fresh single wire solders in parallel with shrink over joint. This way you can join 3-4 common wires and send them to board on one common wire. They're all going to the same place anyhow. On the Darth Ryo Chassis I used in this saber, there was 0 room for wire routing. I have 3 resistors in there, and all the wire above. You have to be smart about it. I staggered my resistors so they weren't all stacked up on top of each other.

I have some video that shows my logic on the RGB Crystal Chamber 5mm LED, and why I did what I did. It also shows how I staggered my resistors in that small channel. If I can jam all those wires in that small channel, you surely can plan this out. It takes a lot of contemplation, staring, and trials. Then put it in action! Some video here of the build process on this chassis:


https://youtu.be/_2NcCUqZoVs

[Tom Tilmon]

One cautionary note. If you have a chassis system that slides out of pommel, minimize or eliminate any wire joints in your cram fu wires. Make your joints in chassis.

Tom

[darthdarth]

Thanks for the video, Tom!

So you used the space behind the speaker too; that is useful for the resistors. Yours are much smaller than mine...I did get them at the CSS, but they are huge; so I went to the local electronics store and got slightly bigger ones (2.2 Ohm); but they are much smaller in size, so even 2 in parallel (so I can get around 1ohm), is smaller than the single bigger resistor :)

You gave me hope; my case is the same as yours, so I think I can fit everything in there. Although your switch is on the clamp; mine is on the red button; so I have 2 extra wires to carry in the channel. This weekend I will give it a try, hopefully I didn't mess up the board

[Tom Tilmon]

I don't think you messed up the board. The way you wired your main LED, you never had any positive going to it. Bridge all the + on the star, and run one red wire off the star to your positive pad (or common up with battery red prior to board). Then run one negative color lead off each - diode on the LED.

Why 1 ohm resistors? I used .47 ohm resistors just to keep the board stable. The blues and whites don't technically need resistors on this setup. What color LED are you using?

Tom

[darthdarth]

I have to take apart the whole assembly first; probably I can even snatch the resistors at the end of the assembly, although the battery channel is quite small, so probably won't work.

I did make the calculations based on the power of each LED; I have a RGB tri-cree star. The blue and green came up as 1 ohm, while the red came up as 1.2, using the online resistor calculator. From my understanding the resistor is both for protection of the LED, and to avoid that the LED grab too much current from the board, so I did play safe and used the resistor suggested on the calculator. I did look for smaller resistor but 2.2 was the smallest I could find, which was also small enough to fit on the 30G wire that I am using.

[Tom Tilmon]

Nevermind, I now see you're running RGB. If you're building a graflex, why RGB? I can see G,B, W....or G,RB,W....or B,B, W...or RB, B, W..or RB,RB, W. You do need at least a 1 ohm resistor on that red diode negative leg. However, on the blue and green...no resistor, or a .47 ohm just to stabilize.

The graflex was blue blade, even when Vader killed Younglings with it in III. I'm just thinking simplify your life a bit. If this is your first build, don't kill yourself. RGB is much more complex, both with wiring on the NBIV, and with configuration files. I think it'd be easier to get the hang of all this stuff on a single color saber...but that is me. My first builds were single color (red) Kylo Ren BS Mods. After those, I designed a MHS hilt from here, and I made that RGB with RGB crystal chamber. I had tons of room to figure things out in there, and learned a lot on that MHS saber.

Then I dialed back to single color blade with W FOC with the graflex. The Graflex 2.0 was complex getting all of my wires in that chassis, that was the challenge there. If you have not yet seen Matt Duley's series on youtube: "Lets build a graflex." You should probably watch all 10 videos and his addendum.

I do think your NBIV will probably be fine if you wired it like your diagram reads.

Tom

[darthdarth]

Well, I did buy a graflex-clone in blue, so since this was my build, I went for the route of customization as main thing. With the RGB I have the freedom to run any of the major colors, without being stuck with just one.

I am aware that it is not "canon", but my graflex is a copy, not the original flashlight; and I was not going for the accurate look anyway; there are plenty of very accurate replica out there; while I want to put my own spin on it.
Plus imagine if Rey turn to the dark side and corrupt the crystal in the lightsaber :P Just for fun, I like the royal blue with white FOC, I like the emerald green too, and the orange; so instead of picking one color, I went for the 3 colors mix :)

I did check the board today and it is still powering up, have a ton of joints to clean up before my 2.0 attempt, but I want to test myself and see if I can get this done. At least I can count on you and others that give me suggestions, so that makes things much easier ;)

[Tom Tilmon]

If you're using goth chassis, resistors won't fit in battery channel. If you see in my video, I actually fit the resistors in the channel between speaker and board. The channel on piece 2, the crystal chamber. If you are using that chassis, definitely watch let's build a graflex series on YouTube. You won't regret it.

[darthdarth]

I see; going for these youtube videos then. I did get the goth3d chassis, so I hope it will help. Thanks!

[Tom Tilmon]

I didn't mean to be nasty about the RGB. I have an RGB saber, and its awesome. Its just a lot more complex that is all. I respect and admire people challenging their skillsets to see what they can come up with! It doesn't add any more wires. I've just changed my MPP 2.0 to a quad cree: dR, dR, R, W which certainly makes that build more difficult, and the config files. So, like you, I enjoy challenging myself. I hope you get to watch all those videos by Matt Duley, they are very informative.

[darthdarth]

No worries, I understand that would make sense for a newcomer to start with something easier. Although I do not have the disposable income to build multiple sabers, so I had to go for the one that I believe is the one that I really want :)

I am decent with MC and soldering; but I never tried a project where wires are so confined, so it is in the end a good practice for me :)