Hi all
Sorry to do this, but my four-year old son Luc is threatening to disown me if I don't work this out.
He already has quite a collection of Hasbro sabers, but a while ago he saw a kid with a custom job. It was pretty basic - more or less a plain black hilt with a few grooves - but was caught his eye was the three buttons controlling an RGB led. Naturally, this led to a request for a new saber. Not having the faintest idea where to start, I hit Google, which led here, and I've spent more time than my wife and employer would like reading page after page of posts. I've gone back to Luc with a plan, but no dice.
"Here - we'll make this PVC hilt, and I'll pop in this TCSS led kit and TCSS blade holder and blade. What colour would you like?"
"Red, green and blue."
"No, you can only have one colour. How about green? Green is awesome!"
"No, it has to be black and have three buttons and make the blade red, green and blue."
*sigh*
So, back to the forums, reading everything I could that came up on a search for 'rgb*'. I'm starting to go in circles, so thought it was time to put my neck on the line (tends to be arms and hands with sabers, though) and ask for advice. I'll try my hardest to be clear and concise about what I'm looking for, and to give links to stuff I've read already.
What I'm trying to do
I'm trying to make saber that fires an RGB led with a button for each die. That's it. No sound, no driver, no sensors, no recharge unit, no secondary leds, no illuminated buttons, no automatic colour changing, no colour mixing beyond what can be done with three buttons. Given that this is a kid's toy and that I'm probably going to end up having to make four of them, I'd like to do it cheaply.
What I've learned so far
The RGB posts on the forum seem to mainly discuss wiring up leds with driver and sound boards, or using something other than buttons to control the led (eg pots, rotaries, dip switches), or both.
The closest I've found is Matt Thorn's three switch RGB saber. Looking through Matt's posts among the various RGB threads, I came across this thread from Matt, in which he discusses wiring up an RGB led to some sort of switch to drive a Force FX conversion. As with many other RGB posts, there's a lot of (totally awesome) stuff going on in those diagrams I don't need, but I thought they'd be a good place to start for my first stab (ha) at a wiring diagram. Put on your noob deflection goggles...now.
It should be abundantly clear by now that I'm an economist, Jim, not an electrician (god, I can't even keep switch acronyms straight in my head - PSTP?!). I freely admit to having no real idea how the negative wiring on the LED works - I've just lifted it straight from Matt Thorn's diagrams, and adjusted it because I'm not using the amber LED. (Why no negative for the blue or red? *shrug* It was like that when I stole it.) I was also planning on lifting his resistor values, but decided against it because (a) he's using a board between the battery pack and the LED, and I'm not sure how that mucks things up and (b) I'm becoming convinced that before I trash a $35 LED I should start with something less valuable from That Place That Cannot Be Named But You Know What I'm Talking About (TPTCBNBYKWITA), and the different wattages would be a gamechanger.
What I'm hoping to learn
Does this look even remotely right? If it's not even close, please feel free to say so and I'll go back to researching so I can make less of an idiot of myself next time.
If it's close, though, or even ballparkish, I'd really love some advice about how to fix it. Apart from incorrect wiring connections, I'd appreciate anything you could say about resistor values for a cheap LED from TPTCBNBYKWITA. If it helps, these appear to be the relevant values for calculating the necessary resistance.
Thanks so much for your time and previous posts, especially Matt - I'll stop stalking you for a while now.
Cheers
obiwanwasabi in Canberra, Australia
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