Hasbro Voltage @ 6volts?

[Danz409]

hello everyone, to my understanding the hasbro board i have is currently running off 3 AA batteries. and the power pack i will be getting for my saber is going to have 4 AAs which is 1.5 volts more then the standard requirement.
will a resistor be needed to lower voltage or does running it on higher voltage effect volume and sound pitch. if it does that without frying the board, i wouldn't mind giving that a try, anyone experiment with this yet?
and if a resistor is needed, how would i calculate 6 volts to 4.5 volts? its been a wile :p

so far this is my setup

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p2/danz409/eletrnoics%20and%20schamatics/sabereffectidea40full.jpg

and a little video of me demonstrating it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TB9_nmqCHpo

[DarthFender]

Hi,

A resistor will not decrease the voltage, it will only decrease the current. You will probably want to a voltage regulator instead. Your local electronic components store should have 5v regs. But Instead of that I would set up with a 4 cell NiMH Rechargeable Battery pack. 4.8 volts. That will be close enough for government work. Then no regulator would be needed.

I like that fade effect. It looks really cool. I;m gonne study your circuit and reproduce it for a saber i'm building for my nephew.

[Danz409]

im acculy doing some modifications to it. at the time its only running a extreamly low current LED. i konw once i pop a bigger LED on there its going to be differnt. so im adding some caps to it and putting a varable resistor on the fade, to change settings when ever i want. it will have a grand total of 13,200 uF oh yea! 1.3 % of a 1 ferid cap :O

[swear000]

looks like a nice setup. Not sure how the resisting will affect the driving voltage if you decide to change to a luxeon. I can say that I have had the Hasbro board running successfully with a Luxeon LED from a 4 AA battery pack. The board just dies for some strange reason when I attempt to put it in the hilt. I am beginning to think that some type of voltage regulator may not be that bad of an idea. Maybe the 4AA setup is pushing the limit of what the board can handle.

[Danz409]

looks like a nice setup. Not sure how the resisting will affect the driving voltage if you decide to change to a luxeon. I can say that I have had the Hasbro board running successfully with a Luxeon LED from a 4 AA battery pack. The board just dies for some strange reason when I attempt to put it in the hilt. I am beginning to think that some type of voltage regulator may not be that bad of an idea. Maybe the 4AA setup is pushing the limit of what the board can handle.

thanks much. glad i didn't test the board before doing research. this saved me a board. and hope that a voltage regulator isn't too expensive. hell i may have one and not know it. i just had a field day with a soldering iron on a power supply, motherboard, and a old stereo system for parts. ill have to research it, thanks for the heads up tho :D

[DarthFender]

Swear,

Do you wrap your boards? If not it could be grounding on your hilt. Also try the rechargeable batteries, 4AA NiMH. It's a lot closer to the 4.5v those things run at anyway.

[sithlordfaust]

I havent had any probs with my hasbro and 6v. Ive rewired several times pulled it out and put it back in a dozen times in the past week and still a go. and im using lithium e2's that put out @ 1.7v at peak. gotta insulated that board.

[Danz409]

Swear,

Do you wrap your boards? If not it could be grounding on your hilt. Also try the rechargeable batteries, 4AA NiMH. It's a lot closer to the 4.5v those things run at anyway.

isn't 1 AA NiMH = 1.5vx4 = 6v wich is 1.5v too much and may fry alot or is NiMH lower voltage then reguler AA?

and also. the advantages of hasbro being so cheap. i guss i could give that a shot. i can use hot-glue to but a nice layer of rubber around everything to prevent shorts

[DarthFender]

NiMH Cells are 1.2v. Alkaline are 1.5v

[sithlordfaust]

isn't 1 AA NiMH = 1.5vx4 = 6v wich is 1.5v too much and may fry alot or is NiMH lower voltage then reguler AA?

and also. the advantages of hasbro being so cheap. i guss i could give that a shot. i can use hot-glue to but a nice layer of rubber around everything to prevent shorts

empty film canisters work well
http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h36/sickboy1138/cantut2.jpg

[Danz409]

wish i would of tryed that first.... just coated this thing in hot glue and now its not working no more >.> dunno what it was. trying to remove glue now to trubleshoot. no sound or anything its like its not getting juice

[update] found the problem. apperntly the hot glue melts at the same timprature as the cheap-o wires used on the board. so i had to put new wires on it and working like a charm now :D and id say this thing is waterproof now XD

[Danz409]

also i found a 9.6v RC car battery that contains 8 of these 1.2v NiCD battery. if i get 4 out and use the same charger on the 4 pack, would it charge it just as well. or being its lower voltage would things go horribly wrong?

http://www.batteries.com/images/256x256/16690.jpg

the charger is a basic 12volt DC transformer (200mw) don't see no smart shutoff device or voltage meeter or anything. just as basic as the one that's on any other DC electronic device

[swear000]

actually, there are a lot of RC batteries I am curious about. Check out the NiMH ones for the Micro-T some time. They are tiny and 4.8V. The hasbro board works fine from a 4 AA battery pack. I did some hard core troubleshooting and found that the battery pack itself had a weak connection. One of the tabs melted somehow. Anyway, things are working great now. I have liquid electrical tape that I am going to try using on a spare board and see how well it works. It is supposed to be di-electric.

[MoonDragn]

Hi,

A resistor will not decrease the voltage, it will only decrease the current. You will probably want to a voltage regulator instead. Your local electronic components store should have 5v regs. But Instead of that I would set up with a 4 cell NiMH Rechargeable Battery pack. 4.8 volts. That will be close enough for government work. Then no regulator would be needed.

I like that fade effect. It looks really cool. I;m gonne study your circuit and reproduce it for a saber i'm building for my nephew.

Actually thats not 100% correct. According to Kirchoff's Voltage Law, the voltage around a closed circuit must equal to zero. If the drop for the sound card is 4.5vs then the resistor would have to handle the extra voltage, 1.5v. If the current flow is 1 amp then the resistor would have to be 1.5 ohm.

According to Kirchoff's current law, the current flowing into a point must equal to current flowing away from a point. Current in this case would be divided equally between the resistor and the sound board.

The difference in figuring this out is that the Sound board is not just one single component but a whole set of circuits with its own loops etc. So this solution is not as easy as it seems. Now you're dealing more loops and more components.

As for the original question. Yes you need a resistor there. You also need a diode to prevent the current mixing between the two loops.

[Danz409]

here's a new question, i can use 4 of those RC car batteries in the battery holder provided, but would the charger that originally works with the full set of 8 work on just 4? if so, ill just use the same charger and keep same connector on but tucked away inside the hilt, these things are exactly AA size so it will work perfectly and give me the 4.7 so no resister will be needed for the Hasbro and only a 1 ohm 2 watt will be needed for the LED

[MoonDragn]

The answer is no. You should not be using the charger for 8 batteries on 4 batteries. Thats double the voltage. If you want batteries exploding on you, go ahead and try. Unless the charger has a setting for the lower voltage, charging those with the wrong voltage can be detrimental to your health.

[Danz409]

the charger itself reads 12 volts, how does that work with the 9.6 volts?

[xwingband]

Rechargeables are like sponges. You feed them extra and they absorb it. I could show it on a video, but a description will have to do. When I manually charge batteries with my PSU I set the voltage higher... for example 12V for a 9.6V pack like yours. It will take a lot of current at first, then it slows. It's cool to see in person. When it's "charged" it will stop taking current.

[MoonDragn]

Again, I don't recomend charging 6 volts of batteries with a 12 volt charger. The output of the 12 volt charger is actually closer to 15 volts and will damage your batteries permanantly.

What X-wing says is true to some extent but there is a voltage tolerance limit on the batteries. 6 extra volts exceeds this limit.

[xwingband]

True, for NiCD and NiMH that limit is 1.5V per cell. So 12V is right for a 9.6V battery pack.

The problem is when you are using a charger with the wrong voltage it won't know when to stop. It still thinks the batteries are low on charge and keeps feeding it. That's true for "dumb" and "smart" chargers.

[MoonDragn]

He's not using 9v. He's gonna be using 4 batteries for 6volts...

[Danz409]

well, they are 1.2 volts each so its only 4.8v and being its a supper basic AC adapter. would just finding a 6 volt AC adapter and hooking the connector on it work?

[Danz409]

*BUMP* anyone????

[MoonDragn]

What kind of batteries are these? Can you describe them?

[Danz409]

a pack of 9.6 volt Ni-Cd battery pack, 700 mAh, i plan to gut it out and take 4 of the batteries and put in the battery holder (AA size) bringing the voltage down to 4.8 volts. the charger for this pack reads 12 volts. its a basic AC-> DC transformer, so to charge the 4.8 volts do i get a 6 volt transformer to keep things from going kaboom?

[MoonDragn]

Oh just get http://www.thecustomsabershop.com/24V-72V-Nimh-Smart-charger-P145.aspx

You can charge it on the 4 cell setting.