NeoPixel blade doesn't work, distorted sound on all non-boot up sounds and beeps.
So I recently completed(ish) my first build but I can’t get the blade to ignite. For reference, this is an NBv4 with a NeoPixel blade. All parts bought from TCSS.
The board itself is all soldered into position and set. When I press the switch, it boots up and blades the little sound to tell me which font I selected. From there, when I press the button to turn on the blade, it doesn’t light up at all. Initially, I thought this was a blade side issue so I desoldered everything and then resold weed everything. There is no bridging whatsoever in the blade, I made sure of that. There is no bridging on the PCB either. I made sure it worked before twisting the wires and after. Once I checked that, I used hot glue as per the TCSS video on building the blades. I followed these to the letter. I popped It in and on the first try, it worked perfectly fine. I took out the sound card to adjust colors and this is where problems started happening.
I noticed the solder for the speaker wires was super close together and at risk of bridging so I very delicately separates them to ensure they wouldn’t bridge, I didn’t even desolder them, I just literally reshaped the solder. Now I booted it up and all of a sudden the audio sounds SUPER grainy, almost like the speaker is blown. Here’s the issue: the beeps and boot sounds fine, it’s the hum and other sounds that have the issue. They’re both audible, but it’s covered by a nasty noise distortion static-y type noise over it. I thought that was weird so I powered everything off and took out the sound card and adjusted the volume. I popped it back in and next thing I know not only is the audio awful, but the blade won’t light. I know for a fact it’s not the blade, so it’s got to be something on the hilt side. The data line and negatives all appear perfectly fine but I cannot tell where the issue is. Sometimes it seems to be the code, sometimes it seems to be the electronics. Every once in a while a blade insertion causes a quick flash of color on the first or second LED but it won’t come back. After thinking it was the SD card, I used a different card. I reset the card to the manufacturer's original, reconfigured it for NeoPixel, and then from there inserted the card into the board. BAM! It worked again. Still had the nasty distortion, but the blade was working. I cycled through to make sure it was reading all of the fonts and it did. Full retraction and everything. Then I put it on with the noise and it sounded awful but was registering the swing sounds. Next, I put it on the mute-on-the-go setting so I didn’t kill my ears. I decided to try the FoC to make sure that worked. It changed to the FoC color and then just stayed white (pure white on the top half, a warmer white on the bottom). No longer is the blade working now. I also decided to recheck everything to ensure there were proper connections and config files. I resoldered the speaker pads to make sure there was no bridging and cleaned it up a bit. I replaced the speaker. Still have the ugly noise and grain but the beeps work fine. The blade won’t turn on still. I checked the L3 pad: looks fine. Checked the positive: looks fine. Checked the L1 and L2 pads: looks fine and they’re sturdily in place. Checked the hilt PCB: looks fine.
Upon listening to the files, the closest sound to the distortion I can describe is that it sounds as if the lockup sound was playing continuously bass-boosted. Obviously, this shouldn't be happening so I don't know why or how to fix it.
Edit: I was able to capture a video for what I am talking about:
https://imgur.com/gallery/ISXHHSl
The sound distortion only begins after the blade is connected but does not disappear after the blade is disconnected. I am also using the colors coordinated to a low-amp calculator from the FXsabers forums (Erv from PL said this doesn't affect anything save for drawing lower power). Also, none of the config files are white except for one on FoC. This isn't the font for white FoC though. The FoC color is supposed to be what is displayed when it goes unresponsive. The color of the blade is supposed to be a mint green color.
