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Rey Cheapo Bladebuilders Saber Conversion, First Build with Wire Diagram
Hello Everyone!
This is my first post here, hope this is the right place. Anyway I went through a lot of trouble converting a Hasbro board and scrolling through forums and bugging my electrical engineer friends and thought that sharing how I did it might be helpful to those out there who want to buy a 15 dollar amazon light saber and soup it up!
First pics of the finished product so you can decide if it's worth your while right away:
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OK so to get the electronics done, I first bought a 15 dollar toy saber from Amazon and stripped out the board and electronics. I was feeling cheap so I kept the speaker (maybe someday will upgrade it) but bought a new Momentary Switch (not a light up one though, I kept it simple and just a solid brass one). Here's the link to the cheap saber. It says "discontinued" probably because now they are marketing Last Jedi gear. This is probably a 2015 era hasbro toy.
https://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Ele...27s+lightsaber
So I took it apart and picked up from the customsaber store:
1) 7.4V li battery pack
2) 2.1mm Charge Port
3) 1000mA BuckPuck
4) Luxeon Rebel Star Royal Blue (MSV1 pre assembled with the heat sink)
5) The wall charger for the 7.4 battery (with the 2.1mm plug, not the fancy one).
From my local electronics store and/or Amazon, I picked up
1) Momentary switch
2) SPDT Switch (make sure it can handle over 1A, you'll burn through those tiny Arduino ones!)
3) PNP Transistor (TIP42C)
4) 5V Regulator (7805 type 1.5A)
6) Heat sink for the 5V Regulator (NOTE: This was super important! The 5V Regulator got really hot since we're drawing a full amp for the LED!)
This is how I wired everything together:
http://schematics.com/project/lights...version-64399/
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Now a few important notes:
1) Make sure you get a heat sink for the 5V Regulator, it gets hot! I used a small heat sink nested in a slightly bigger one.
2) I added the SPDT switch at the bottom for 2 reasons. First, I wanted to make sure that when the saber charges, the saber can't be turned on. I just wanted to isolate that circuit for safety so the board doesn't explode or anything. Second, I noticed the 5V Regulator draws about 5mA from the battery when the saber is turned off. This means without the hard switch, your battery will discharge in about a week if it's the 1400mAh capacity. So the SPDT (single pole double throw) switch was nice having a hard-off, charge mode, and "on" mode. The only thing you have to be careful about is that when it's in "on" mode, and you turn the saber on with the momentary switch, make sure you turn the saber off with the momentary switch before switching the SPDT (ie don't use the SPDT to turn off the light). It sort of messes up the board and makes a beep sound instead of turning on and i had to flip the SPDT a few times back and forth before the thing started working right again. It will work ok, it just messes with the logic on the board I think and has issues so anyway just be warned.
3) Clearly the hardest part of the build is putting everything in the hilt. I found the extension bits in the sabershop to be EXTREMELY helpful.
4) For the hilt I bought mostly parts from the sabershop store here but also did the sink-pipe trick. Went to the Home Depot and picked up a chrome 1.5" sink tube, then dremeled out the curvy bits. The Brass connector screws it in place (picked brass for aesthetics to match my momentary switch. My buddy helped me mirror finish it in his shop). I plastic printed the black chunk at the bottom because my SPDT was a bit large and had to raise it out of the hilt a little bit to save room for shoving the battery in.
5) Lessons learned: Shoving the electronics in really is the hardest part. Like everyone says, you won't have space. Really think about it and prepare when you do your soldering. Think about whether or not you really need all that extra wire length, or if you can afford it to be shorter. Planning ahead really helps...
Anyway I hope this is helpful to other noobs!
Fun Side-note, I won my work-Halloween costume contest so I made back some of the money I spent! All in all it was a super fun project, I learned a ton, and now I own a super cool lightsaber that makes all my friends jealous!
