Inconsistent, erratic behavior from sound board...feeing defeated

At Christmas, I got my hands on one of those clearance CF9 boards, and I was ecstatic. I’ve done some basic saber wiring in the past, but this was my first rodeo with a real premium sound board. I read the manual (certain parts several times over) to ensure I was assembling things correctly. I got it all wired up and everything was working, with 1 very odd characteristic.

When I’d take out the kill key, I’d get the normal boot sound. Then, when I pressed the main activation switch....the lightsaber would ignite with the appropriate noise. And then, after about 1-2 seconds....it would just start going crazy: clashes galore, blaster deflects, etc... This was happening with both the sound and the LED matching that behavior, while the wiring kit was sitting untouched on the table.

Now here’s the even weirder part: I could reset the kill key, and there’s a chance the saber would boot up just fine, with 100% normal activation and behavior. Or it could still be acting crazy. It's like it was totally random.

I thought maybe there could be a solder bridge between my activation/aux switches on the board...but I removed all the wiring, cleaned up the pads with copper braid before reassembly, and am pretty confident that isn’t the issue. I even swapped out the switches and the recharge port for spares just to see if they were causing the issue, but the behavior continued exactly as before...with sometimes working, and other times not. Which leads me to the problem of not knowing what could possibly be the culprit.

Found a possible reason - http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...020#post279020

Thanks. I’ve read through the threads, and it seems there may be a few ideas to try. The thing that is weird is that this problem seems to be experienced with a decent number of people just around the holidays (probably with all the CF9 boards that were sold on clearance). I’ve already tried replacing the recharge port and switches, with no change. I haven’t tried another battery, as I don’t have a spare....and the one I have is brand new and charged.

One of those threads says there is a relatively new firmware update that supposedly addresses this very thing...so I’m going to look into that and keep my fingers crossed.

Thanks again.

I don’t suppose anyone else has dealt with a similar issue and has a solution?

Unfortunately no, only thing I can think of is to message erv and see if he has any other ideas besides the recharge port.

I also don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that it was a batch of clearance. Is your board secured to your chassis and insulated from sound vibration? One very simple explanation is that the saber has good resonance, and your motion gates are set normal, or lower, and the hum is triggering motion for swings, clashes, etc.

I had a few hilts (sidious/korbanth Sid 2.0 as a prime example) where the close quarters and resonance required me to set the motion gates way high to avoid constant swing/clash.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scott

Is your board secured to your chassis and insulated from sound vibration? One very simple explanation is that the saber has good resonance, and your motion gates are set normal, or lower, and the hum is triggering motion for swings, clashes, etc.

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I had considered that, but it has happened when the soundboard is secured to the chassis, and when it is not, with me holding the soundboard directly to absorb any vibrations. And yeah, I was holding my hand very still.

But even still, there are times when it is going crazy, then I turn it off, reset the kill key, turn it back on, and it acts completely normal. If it was due to vibration, I would think it would be erratic EVERY time, but that is not the case.

Thanks for the responses.

Do you have resistors on your LEDs that are attached to channels two and three?

I did when I had the leds hooked up, but I had removed everything to attempt cleaning all the pads, and only hooked up power, sound, and the activation switches....and it was still having the problem.