bit of an update to "v2 upgrade diagram" from Feb.

After a good bit of turmoil in my life (irrelevant to saber building, so I'll move on)
I am in a place where I can work on my hobby.

I've upgraded my saber as seen in the image I posted to that thread, but with a couple
wiring changes for convenience of soldering.

1) 3 wires are soldered to the recharge port right lug (battery +, LED +, & nano + input)
2) 2 wires are soldered to the center lug (battery neg & a switch wire)

The nano neg input is soldered to the left lug (with S/C logo... unchanged from photo)

This upgrade hasn't come w/o some headaches, however... seems to be the norm for me.
The boot sound plays when I pull the kill plug, the LED lights up fine when I hit the switch.
Hum, swing and clash sounds all play as expected... One issue is that if I leave the saber
idling for a few moments, it starts making a click or pop type sound every 3-4 seconds.
I'm not sure if this is a low battery issue, or...? The charger I have is 3.7v smart charger
w/ 2.1 mm plug. I plug it in the wall, it's LED is green. I then plug it into the saber's port,
the LED goes red, & no matter how long the saber is plugged in, the color doesn't change.
Lastly, my new (technically 14 months old, but unused) Aoyue 469 decided to jump the shark
before I could get the last 2 joints done so I ended up having to fabricobble a mechanical
connection using a female JST connector & a needle nose pliers. (A kinda long story in it's
own right, so plz don't ask, lol)

Link to original topic (with the image I mentioned in previous post)
http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...wiring-diagram

Any ideas on what might be going wrong? I'm hoping to get this diagnosed & possibly fixed
fairly soon. It's be awesome if I could have it in working order for a certain movie that's being
released on the day I turn 41.

Maybe a bad battery if it never takes a full charge. Speaker pops are usually a sign of a low battery. Perhaps it can take on a little charge, but will never charge fully where the charger will sense that 4.2v or so and send you the green light to play. Every now and then you can get a bad battery.

Before you replace the battery, I'd check all the rc port wires. Or, try to direct connect battery to a loose recharge port, and charge that way. Once you do those trouble shooting moves, put a volt meter on the battery after it charges or its been on the charger. You should have 4.2 or so v on a full charge. You either have a bad battery (which can happen every now and then), or your chargers is not functioning. Of course, your rc port could be amok too. To me, the RC port is where I think you should start. The leg with switchcraft printed on it is the shutoff leg. The leg that is killed by the kill key. That should be the Neg. leg to your board/switches. The center pin, the outermost ring on the bottom of the rc port leg with the plastic insulator under it goes direct to battery positive. The remaining leg is your battery direct negative leg. I think you should only have on wire on that leg to battery.

Tom

Last night I did what I'll call a quick & dirty diagnostic.
I pulled the chassis 90% apart... removing the recharge port, disconnected the battery,
unplugged the led module and removed all the wires except the two for the speaker.

By the time I was done, just the chassis skeleton was intact, with bass speaker in it's v4 holder, and nano biscotte in it's chassis discs, and of course, the aluminum spacers. I had an old 2x AA battery holder laying around, so I connected that to the sound board with some pc standoff pins in place of soldering. I then loaded 2 new alkaline duracells in it. The boot sound played as expected. Finally I took a used wire that had both ends tinned and ran one end to the negative on the battery holder, the other end I briefly touched to the nano's switch pad.
The poweron.wav file played as expected, followed by the looping hum, and as before...
the incessant tap every 3 or so seconds.
(Unless of course, if I tap or move the chassis, which would trigger the swing / clash sounds.)
I don't know if my 18650 would be bad, I bought it here in Feb, just haven't been able to use it until my attempt at building the saber last week.

I totally forgot to mention in previous posts, but I did have the kill key in the recharge port, and the microSD card out of the nano while I was doing the soldering in my install attempt.

Do you have a multimeter? Check the voltage on the battery (if you don't have one, they are farily inexpensive and indispensable).

It could be a bad charger, and if the charger is bad it could damage the battery.

are you using custom fonts? COuld the tick be a glitch or sound error in the fonts, or on the SD card? Have you tried re-formatting and re-writing the SD card? I still say you either have a battery or charger or rc port issue with your green light never coming on with the charger. I concur with JBKUMA, put a multi meter on that battery to see what you got voltage-wise.

Tom

I do have a multimeter, will test as soon as I get home.
(no budget at the moment for internet, have to connect to a friend's wi-fi with my Android tablet.)

I seem to remember when I bought the Nano card here a couple years ago, the manual stated it would work with a max 2GB microSD card. For the life of me I cannot seem to find that original manual. By contrast, the manual currently on the Plecter Labs website says it can work with a 16GB card. I'm not sure which spec would apply to my v2, but if it is the old one... then that could also be part of my issue as the original 2gb microSD cracked at some point and had to be replaced. The smallest capacity I could find in local stores at that point was 4gb.
(FWIW, I live in a fairly small, rural town - Pop. 2000 - approx 70 miles north of the Twin Cities.

--- Edit to add:
To answer Tom's question, no custom fonts, just the default light & dark meat that come standard with the Nano Biscotte.

The V2's did support up to 16 GB. I just checked the manaul in my archives.

Quick update while I'm online with B.K. free Wi-Fi.

I hooked up my TCSS 18650 battery to my multimeter last night. It said 3.75 volts.

Another update, fwiw...
I ran another test with a different battery (Trustfire 14500). It had been sitting unused for a while, so I thought it might need a charge. I plugged it into my TS-001 charger, and sure enough, within a couple hours, the LED turned green.

With my multimeter I verified the charge at 4.21 volts. I connected it to my NB, along with the speaker and switch. (Rebel LED deliberately omitted to minimize battery drain during test.) When I hit the button, I got the normal power on sound, followed by the hum, and the pop every 4 seconds.

Having tried 3 different battery configurations now, I think it's safe to rule out (insufficient) power as the culprit behind my malfunction.
Then again, the 2x AA alkaline attempt may not have been able to prove anything either way.
(I now remember the manual says it was meant to run on between 3.4 to 5.5 volts.)

I admit my electronics knowledge is somewhat lacking, have no idea what my next diagnostic step should be, & am almost at a breaking point, wondering if I should try sending this board to Zook (assuming he's still on these forums & still the Plecter authorized repair tech)... or if I should instead just throw in the towel, drop this NB in the circular file & maybe try starting over w/ a Pico Crumble.