4 Attachment(s)
Help W First Time wiring NB3
I built my first custom saber with "cool looking parts" that my brother and I collected through highschool. When my son asked me what that box was in the closet of my childhood bedroom, we pulled them out and I finally put together my first saber two or three years ago. But until the Kickstarter and ASP program, I had no idea that there was a community doing this and building the most impressive sabers ever!
Before I ask for help, I have to start by saying thank you to everyone in the community here for being so awesome. I'll try to give back wherever I can!
I'm working on my first set of electronics, though, and I didn't follow or think of NovaStar's tips on building logically and testing along the way, so now i'm stuck... when I plugged everything together, I had the sound of the speaker give the start up sound two or three times, but not fully, like it played a second or two and then stopped, but that was as soon as I put in the battery. After that, pressing the button and trying different elements hasn't worked. I tried a combination removing the light on the momentary switch but that didn't help.
Now there's bunches that I'm puzzled by and I'll post back as I test each part as individually as I can, but let's start with the questions and the picutres
For a tight fit and some organization, i'm working it all into a part that I ordered from Shapeways that was 3D printed for these parts/items
http://www.shapeways.com/product/RHX...ionId=59698629
I ordered the prewired part for the NB3, but I wanted to use the smaller jumpers so I replaced... though in action, i'm not sure they really consume any less space... anyhow, the prewired set came wired with a Red line leading to the pair with the Orange...
Attachment 14177
BUT, the wiring that came with the LED that I ordered came a little differently than I'd imagined...
Attachment 14178
it is a Green + Green, with White FOC and the wiring two wires combined into one Red and then one black as a pair and then one single wire for the FOC. So my first question was, doesn't that need to be a pair? But I guess that the red is over in the other set... so it's a single... OK with me, but do I need to do something with this red coming off of the prewiring?
anyhow, this is my full setup now...
Attachment 14179
and this is my wiring diagram of what i'm trying to achieve
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I had read that with the battery being 3.7, that i wouldn't have to wire up resistors if I didn't want to and in early testing, when taping them up, the lights looked dimmer with resistors so I decided to leave them out (let me know how bad an idea that was...)
The other kind of custom thing here is that I wanted to have the lighted anti vandal momentary switch, and I wasn't sure where to get another line of +/- from so I made a Y splice, but made it with connectors so I could remove it or swap as needed. Was that an OK idea? or does that diminish the power to the main LED or cause a problem?
At the moment I'm looking for help and some eyes on the wiring (for what you can see, I know it's tough... i can add specific shots where it helps)... later, after a round or two of me trying to troubleshoot, I may be asking the forum for who I might send it to for some fixing if I get too stuck!
Thanks again,
Ryan
5 Attachment(s)
SOLVED, now it's working! A lesson in TESTING
OK Folks, Fourth of July weekend, perfect time for this project... I spent the first two days of the long weekend working on this and was really bummed that it wasn't working... really wish I had thought of the prudent steps of testing each element as you go that Novastar has outlined... now I know!
SO, I at least thought that I could follow it in breakdown of the different elements so here are the tests that I did:
Test 1. Test the Vandal Light - it works
Attachment 14188
Test 2. Test the Vandal Switch action - it works
Test 3. Test the Green LED - it works
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Test 4. Test the Y shape splice - Branch A - it works
Test 4.5 Test the Y shape splice - Branch B - it works
Test 4.75 Test them both together - it works
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Pretty cool to see two lights! It dawns on me that with enough wire I could power a two sided saber from one switch!
Test 5. Test the FOC white and it comes on too!
Next test???
At this point, i thought that all i can do to test next is to start taking apart my wiring and soldering to work on testing the individual wires connected to the Nano Biscotte V3... MAN I did not look forward to that, So i looked back to my wiring diagram to make sure I'd tested everything that I could first...
Here's my wiring diagram again where i've now recorded the tests
Attachment 14186
You see the one thing that I realized I could still test?
MY BATTERY
It had been working earlier in the day yesterday... but I still needed to test it. I put the battery into another unit and it was DEAD
In another tense second, I put the good battery into the unit with the soundcard and KRACKLE-VROOOOOOOMOOOOMMMMMMMMMM !
Whoo Hoo! There was nothing wrong with all that wiring and time spent, the battery had gotten burned or had drained!
Attachment 14187
