I'm baaaaaack...

**Kant Lavar** · 03-03-2011, 04:23 AM

I know I kind of vanished, and it's quite likely only a handful of you will actually remember me at all. But when Jay-Gon mentioned in the RL Great Lakes Base forums that the TCSS sound board had been released, and it was a version of the Petit Crouton... well, let's just say I made time like I'd been in the Millennium Falcon.

So. Last summer, while at the Grand Rapids Whitecaps Star Wars Night, as I was about to show Jay my MHS saber, Perseverance, I was treated to an incident of the magic blue smoke. My LED leads got crossed and now I have an Ultrasound 2.5 board that only makes sound. (Of course, being the high-speed, low-drag wanna-be-Jedi/former-Army-troop, I was prepared and had an MR Luke I toted around for the evening. But that's neither here nor there.)

I have two other US boards, one of which I didn't get to work in the first place, and has bits of wire hanging off it. The other has a chip of a corner missing from the PCB. Near as I can tell, it should still work - none of the components seem to be missing or damaged. But all else being equal, for my "flagship" saber, I'd like to keep it as cutting-edge as possible. Thus, I'm starting planning to take this:

- and make it better... stronger... faster.

Well, better, anyway.

What this will entail: Replacing everything from the gear section down. The saber is already disassembled, so no worries there. To house the switches, I plan on grabbing a style 2 activation box and filling it with all the trimmings. I was smart enough to stash away a few extra AV switches back in the day, so that's one part I won't need to purchase.

Two problems present themselves, however. One, after mounting the PC board in a similar manner to the Ultrasound - on the 2AA battery pack, itself mounted on a speaker mount - I'm not certain a 5-inch section, as I had it before, will fit the speaker mount, board, battery holder, and the terminal ends of the two switches and power jack - and, just for kicks, since Tim isn't doing powdercoating, I figured instead of a fluted extention, I'd use some of those internal grips. Again, a potential problem arises - will the grips interfere with the speaker mount? I suspect not, or if they do, a few moments with sandpaper here and there should iron most problems out. And, just because it's closer to my initial idea, replace the pommel with a number 10.

After some time spent reading the PC user manual, making some notes, a touch of math, and some PowerPoint Ranger-ism, and I worked up the following:

Anyone see anything wrong, or can pass along some best-practices from actually having worked with the PCs, and/or the internal grips?

EDIT: Well, I can tell one thing that's wrong already - this is why you don't do diagrams while under the influence of insomnia, campers. The DPDT switch looks like it's wired to be normally closed, where it should be - and only can be, IIRC - normally open. Just a schematic error, and easily fixed on my computer. I just don't feel like re-uploading the image at the moment - I really should be shutting this infernal machine off and trying to get a little sleep...

**Komakon** · 03-03-2011, 05:10 AM

This looks good to me, almost about the same as I have going right now.
Let me know how this turns out.

**Skottsaber** · 03-04-2011, 02:40 AM

You can always change the PC config files for a NC switch.

**Kant Lavar** · 03-04-2011, 03:20 PM

A point, but after grabbing an AV switch I have and fiddling with it and a multimeter, I can confirm that the ones I have are NO switches. Either way, no biggie. (On some levels, I'd like to spring for a green switch rather than the red ones I have, but it seems like Tim's having supply problems with the AV switches - I've been known to poke through the store on occasion, despite having not been on the boards, and it seems to me that all of the AVs have been out of stock for a few months now.)