Baby Steps in Wiring

Hi, all.

I am finally in a position where I can begin practicing my wiring/soldering on some of the cheaper components (if I fry these, I'm not out so much money) and I thought I'd post the results of my first attempt. Before I continue, let me say that I have read and understand (I believe) the wiring diagrams and tutorials provided by the forum's stickies. I will also say that, just as I'm no electrician, I'm also no photographer. The picture supplied may not do you any good in critiquing my application.

I began by selecting the recharge port for my initial experiment. I have a volt meter, so measuring whether I have successfully made contact without bridging anything should have been pretty easy. I looked up the diagram provided Corbin Das (Thank you, Corbin. Thank you forever.) and did the best I could.

It was my understanding that the port's positive (+) receives both the battery pack and the soundboard's positives (+), so I soldered the two positive wires together, then to the contact pin. I then soldered the battery pack's negative (-) wire to the central pin -the port's negative (-)- and the soundboard's negative (-) to the port's second negative (-), which is the last pin on the left. If the port is oriented with the center pin at the bottom, the right pin holds two red wires(+), the bottom pin holds one negative wire (-), and the left pin holds one negative wire (-).

If I read things right, the switches are wired directly to the board, in the corresponding holes. I believe the main and Aux share a common negative, but I'll have to reread the PCU manual. I'm not ready for switches yet, anyway.

http://i262.photobucket.com/albums/i...rgePort001.jpg

When it was all wired up, the board input wires measured voltage without the plug, no voltage with it. I had voltage at the battery output side with the charger plugged into the port, no voltage at the battery without it. I just have to remember to either order a new charger, or ask Tim for a replacement connector, since I did a stupid and forgot that Tim orders custom chargers from Tenergy, not the stock model. I've got a recharge port plug with a plastic white connector and a battery charger with alligator clips. ~facepalm~

I chose to wire everything with the JSTs, simply because they're easy to connect and disconnect. My wiring scheme is consistent: Anything which outputs to a device is wired as a male JST. Anything which receives input from a device is wired as female. If every wiring connection is done in the same way, I can tell at a glance whether something is an input or output.

But...it works. I know it's an extremely simple procedure and just routine for all the experts, but I'm a total novice at this. I'm proud of it. I just can't believe I got it on the first try.

More as I get it.

Hi, all. I've got an update on my progress with wiring my first saber. It's slow going, with all the studying and new concepts to learn, but it's well worth it to me. I'm impressed I got as far as I did.

As I understand it, the ban on links is only for solicitation and not for showing our work. The following link is meant only for the latter purpose: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3v6b...ature=youtu.be
If this violates the Terms of Service of this forum, I will happily take it down.

The battery packs were wired up as described in another of my posts. I scavenged two of the plastic battery modules from a couple of cheapie aluminum flashlights to make this work. The first two modules suffered catastrophic failure during my initial soldering, because (like an idiot) I seemed to have forgotten that heat makes plastic melt. For my second attempt I carefully removed the positive and negative main terminals, soldered them with the aid of helping hands, then reattached them to the modules. The two modules are joined by a short length of red wire, for a series pack at 7.75v (registered on my voltmeter).

I wired everything but the switch with JSTs, though, in retrospect I wish I'd wired the switch that way as well. All of my wiring follows the same format: That which gives voltage is wired male JST, that which receives voltage is wired as female JST. This way I can tell, at a glance, which terminals are sending voltage and which are receiving it. I did not wire my AUX switch, since the momentary I bought did not come with any attached wiring. I'm holding out for a couple of AV Momentaries anyway. Those come later.

I dinked with the config file before shooting this video, since that was the only way to get the swings to register. I had to set them incredibly low to catch the movements of my hand (ls: 5, hs: 10), but the clash was spot-on.

The reason there is no light is the bad news. During my feeble attempts as a novice, I damaged one of the traces on my LED Engin 10W GGGG, mucked up another with some kind of solder slag, and did not feel competent to try the other two. There must be something I'm missing in my soldering technique. I will review all available information and try it again. Three out of the four LED dice still function; it's just a matter of cleaning off the solder and trying again. I won't have Flash on Clash, but at least it's still possible I could have a blade.

Thanks for reading.

UPDATE: Because I'm stubborn, and because I don't like to lose, I went after my LED again after making this post. It took at least a half hour to find the right combination of fiddling around, but the solder finally stuck. I don't have Flash on Clash, but I do have an LED. Unfortunately I also lost my speaker when trying to mount it to the V4.

My thanks to all who have helped me to come this far, especially those who have written tutorials for the site, and to Tim for setting up TCSS in the first place. Hopefully I will have the resources to continue this hobby. I have so many ideas to contribute. I'm getting my hilt pieces as soon as I can, and will post the pictures/videos in the appropriate galleries when that happens.

Video of my (mostly) completed internals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pMLO...ature=youtu.be

Congratulations! It's not easy to solder to the LedEngins, as you've found out. It does get easier with practice, trust me.

With 3 functional dice, you could still do FoC, just using the 3rd die. You'll need to recalculate the resistor, and it won't be as noticeable as a two-dice flash, but it should still be plenty visible.

Yeah, the bit about links is to not post links to sites that compete with Tim's business. No buying or selling on these forums. Video links showing off your work are encouraged, and we enjoy looking at them.