Quad Rebel LED setup

[SophiannaKatan]

So here I am, poking around and starting to be a bit more active in the building sabers kind of scene, and I know that there are quad rebels out there.

Using a Nano Biscotte, how would you wire one up? I know there are power issues due to the Quad setup needing around 9V, but how would one wire it while using a Nano Biscotte? Use the power extender perhaps? Mostly I'm feeling out options, as I plan to work on a sith staff soonish, and would like to make it as bright as I possibly can. I have a Nano Biscotte that's not in use, so I figured I would use it in the staff.

Thoughts?

[Forgetful Jedi Knight]

So here I am, poking around and starting to be a bit more active in the building sabers kind of scene, and I know that there are quad rebels out there.

Using a Nano Biscotte, how would you wire one up? I know there are power issues due to the Quad setup needing around 9V, but how would one wire it while using a Nano Biscotte? Use the power extender perhaps? Mostly I'm feeling out options, as I plan to work on a sith staff soonish, and would like to make it as bright as I possibly can. I have a Nano Biscotte that's not in use, so I figured I would use it in the staff.

Thoughts?

Well, my "thoughts" are these:

1. MORE isn't always better, at most, you will be able to power 2 of the four dice. Newbies tend to make the mistakes that 10W is the brightest out there (which could be accurate with the right conditions), BUT most of the time in saber making, we don't have those right conditions.

2. If you want "bright", you should STRONGLY consider either a single die rebel, or a possibly a tri-rebel, but again, you would only be able to use 2 dice. Your other option, would maybe try a 5W single die LEDEngin. Also the color choice has something to do with the brightness as well.

3. If you are going to use a NB, you're options will be limited due to the power they need (3.7V) and the power you "would like" to have.

4. IF you are going to do a dual bladed staff, you would either need 2 NB's or graduate to a PC.

[Silver Serpent]

Also remember that you can run multiple LED dice in parallel without needing to increase the voltage. Current becomes a limiting factor though, and you'll probably start seeing issues if you try to run 3 dice or more. That's assuming you're using an 18650 li-ion. Smaller cells will cap out lower than that.

[Johannes Huber]

Hi!,

I actually just finished wiring up a tri-rebel to a Nano-Biscotti with a Nimh battery setup (it's getting sent out of country so no batteries can even be with the saber in transit. Bye-bye Lith-ions...) and it works quite nicely with the 4.8 volts (which is rated as ok for the NB) and the 1000mA available with that power supply. I've wired up the quad rebels before in seriallel for a 7.4/1400mA system in the "Velocity" build I posted a little while ago, and I can't see a reason why one couldn't theoretically use an NB and a quad rebel, but the power consumption will be heavy if all four LEDs are set at 1000mA since one will, as Silver Serpent says, have to run them in parallel which works out to consuming around 4000mA per hour if all 4 four are on and at 1000mA. The other thing is that different colors on the rebels do definitely have differing "perceived" brightness (the cool whites are unbelievable at 1500 mA...) so some experimenting will be in order to find the best solution for your own tastes as Forgetful Jedi mentions... As an example: I prefer using the cool white Luxeon LED and a blue filter to using the blue Luxeon for an "arctic/ice" blue but that's merely my preference...
Whoops, hold on... I just looked up the stats on the brightest of the all red LEd quads, and the total Vf for the 4 LEDs is 9.2 which means that each LED needs 2.3 Vf (average) so a serial setup for 2 LEDs per pair would require 4.6 Vf and then a 4.8V Nimh solution might work a quad blade in seriallel, particularly since from all accounts the Luxeon reds don't respond well to current over 700mA (there's a chart over on fx-sabers describing the limits of the various quads current wise). So if I read the stats on the Luxeon site are correct, you could theoretically run the reds in "seriallel" as FenderBender has dubbed it in his excellent LEDEngin tutorial and it would consume about around 1400 mA per hour which could give an ok runtime on the 1000mA power supply of a Nimh though still not a massive one.
Forgetful Jedi is also right (and he and Silver Serpent have way more knowledge than I do about pretty much everything concerning building these things...) on that you'll need two NBs and two power systems for a saber staff, since otherwise things would get ugly on power consumption assuming one got the whole thing wired together and working. So far, I'm incredibly impressed with the NB (read: tempted to play with nothing else for a while...) and I think that, with caveats, you could make this work quite nicely depending on what you are looking for. If you like, I can send you a link to some photos of the seriallel setup I used on the cool white Quad rebel and a close up of how I wired the Tri-Rebel in for all 3 LEDs on the NB. That should give you a pretty close match for what you would do to hook up a seriallel red quad to an NB with a Nimh power solution. Let me know,

Johannes

[SophiannaKatan]

Lots of food for thought, thank you, all of you. I'll use the NB then for a separate project, and look more closely at the PC. The saber itself, being a 'sith' saber will likely be red in color. Given the staff is likely to be one piece, rather then two hilts bound together, they'll be plenty of space for power, so I'm not as worried about run time (though it is a consideration) as I much as I am about how apparently bright the saber will be/is to be.

My plan is to have the staff hilt roughly 24" in length (though it could be longer), and I'm currently debating on 18650s or 22500s. The larger battery may have a slightly better run time, as well as what route to take to get the brightest result. I have used an LEDengine 10 Watt before, mind, and while it was brighter, I'm not certain it was worth the difference in run time.

Anyway, fer now it's all sketches and ideas written down - doing more planning for this then I have for the others I've done electronics for.

-- SKA

[Seancrowne]

This was so helpful! I would love to see the quad cool white setup it's what I'm thinking of doing. How did it come out do you use two separate power cells? And power two die seperatly?one off the NB and the other direct?

[Forgetful Jedi Knight]

This was so helpful! I would love to see the quad cool white setup it's what I'm thinking of doing. How did it come out do you use two separate power cells? And power two die seperatly?one off the NB and the other direct?

This thread is a couple of years old.

Since you're here, you may want to read my commentary below. Though the technology has changed a bit since way back then.