LED Strip NOT LIGHTING UP (at all)

So, I've been pouring through the forums here and various other saber sites trying to solve the last hiccup I've had building my LED strip saber. Essentially, even though everything is wired up properly, the led strips will not light up at all. I've been wracking my brains trying to locate the issue and at this point I'm completely stuck. I'm running a nano biscotte v4 with a 18650 3.7V battery (the 10A protected battery), using the tcss neopixel adapters blade/hiltside, and the led strips are the WS2812(B) kind.
I've got everything wired up properly to my knowledge; the recharge port/kill key works fine, the mom switch works fine, and I can use a multimeter to determine that the battery is getting 3.7 v to all pins on the hilt side adapter. I have the ledstrip setting in the override set to 126 (pixels), and the ls1 and ls0 are set to 14 and 28, respectively, as per the nano biscotte manual. I think the problem is the blade side adapter, which I wired exaclty like Rob did in his video, but doesn't seem to get any kind of current.
However, when it's in contact with the hilt adapter, it reboots my saber and makes a kind of ticking sound (if its not all the way in contact), and when I hit the switch, nothing. None of the pixels light up at all. Is it possible I fried the blade side? And if so, how would that have happened? I bridged the two spots and have a 470ohm resistor on the data line. At this point I'm going to get another blade side adapter pcb and rewire it more carefully but I wanted to see if there is something that I'm overlooking at all.


Attachment 16439
Blade side wiring
Attachment 16438
Hilt side wiring (Underside)
Attachment 16440
Current setup.

*Edit: One of the thumbnail images shows the battery I had in before that wasn't getting enough amps that I switched out for the 3.7 v protected one. I'm new to the forums so I'm not sure how to remove an image

Im no expert by any means, but if your saber is rebooting when your blade connector touches the hilt side it is possible that the wiring in your saber allows some type of bridge or short. I would double check that your wiring in your saber is all protected and that no solder joints on your NB are touching the walls of your hilt and make sure that your positive from the pixel strip is going to board positive. Try to run the saber without a blade in and make sure that it is most definately not an issue on the hilt side. Also double check that the arrows on the strips are pointing away from the saber. All else fails I've heard of strips having an issue with the first pixel, some people cut out the first pixel and then wire it up to the adapter. Hope this helps, best of luck.

Does it reboot constantly if you just start it up with the blade already inserted? If so it might be a sign of either uncharged battery or said battery being insufficient.

I'd just be rewiring all your connections and making sure along the way that they're correct.

Ok, thanks for the replies, I've been doing more troubleshooting based on your suggestions. I fully charged up the battery last night to run more tests and here's what I found: The saber boots up fine without the blade in, no sound distortion or anything. The saber boots up fine WITH the blade in, but still no lights. I even took a spare strip I had lying around and wired up some 470uf capacitors to the strips positive/negative like the manual suggests. I even rewired another blade side adapter, again following the video on tccs youtube channel. Still no dice.

Attachment 16451

For reference, this is the wiring diagram I made before I started the build, so if something was wrong at this stage, it carried over to my build.

Thanks for the replies, I've been doing more troubleshooting per your suggestions. I fully charged up my battery, and rewired the blade side adapter to make the connections less messy. Here's what I found: The saber boots up perfectly without the blade inserted/no contact between the hilt side and blade adapters. The saber boots up fine WITH the blade inserted, no more speaker distortion or constant rebooting, but still no lights. I even took an extra strip and put some 470 uf capacitors onto the positive/negatives of the strips as per the manual, but still no dice.

Attached is the wiring diagram I made before starting my build, so if something was wrong at this level, it would have carried over during the build.

Attachment 16456

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Snoringeagle

Ok, thanks for the replies, I've been doing more troubleshooting based on your suggestions. I fully charged up the battery last night to run more tests and here's what I found: The saber boots up fine without the blade in, no sound distortion or anything. The saber boots up fine WITH the blade in, but still no lights. I even took a spare strip I had lying around and wired up some 470uf capacitors to the strips positive/negative like the manual suggests. I even rewired another blade side adapter, again following the video on tccs youtube channel. Still no dice.

Attachment 16451

For reference, this is the wiring diagram I made before I started the build, so if something was wrong at this stage, it carried over to my build.

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take the capacitors out. Hook directly in to a string. Bypass the adapter if you can.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tom Tilmon

take the capacitors out. Hook directly in to a string. Bypass the adapter if you can.

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Any luck fixing this?

So, I took a few months off to meditate and try and look at the problem from a few different angles before diving back in. I rewired the Nano Biscotte and blade adapters making sure the positive and negative wires were 24 gauge and the data line was 28 (I realized I had left some 28 gauge wire on part of the data line from when I first wired it up). I found out by accident when I was holding the two adapters together that I can breifly bridge the data pad/negative pad on any of the adapters and get a portion of the strip to light up. And still measuring the voltage with a multimeter shows 4.04 volts on the positive and negative, and about 1.71 volts on the data line. I don't know if this is because the nano biscotte's l3 pad puts out less volts on purpose, or if its a result of the resistor, because I can meausure that same voltage at any length on the line, even on the pad. I don't know if this means at some point I started frying the l3 pad on accident, or what.

More meditation is required

Hook your negative from strips direct to negative on NBIV to see if that lights it up. If so, you have fried a FET at some point.

Tom

Using 2 data wires on the blade side, with one of the data wires resistored. That worked for me. One for each pad. With one data wire for the hilt side.