HARDWIRE Force FX lightsaabers

[RM SAMURAI]

Starting with this solution might be best. With it, you get up and running now, and you can always go fancier later. For your situation, Silvers idea is really the best of both worlds. Quick implementation now, with the ability to get fancy later is you still feel the need.

I believe you are right with this method I can always upgrade later.
That being said. What do you guys think would be the best method of hardwiring the sabers.

[hedgehog1]

Remembering that I have not seen one of these style in person: Do these sabers have a 'removable' battery packs with AAA's in them? If so, then getting 'shore power' to them could be rather painless. How are the batteries installed in them?

[RM SAMURAI]

Yes they have removable battery packs

[hedgehog1]

OK - this makes it easier (relatively speaking).

Take each removable battery pack, put batteries in it and test the external contacts. Use a volt-meter to find the positive and negative contacts, and note them down. The batteries can now be removed from the pack. Next, find the two battery contacts that are the 'other end' of the packs contacts (where the first and last AAA's made contact). You may be able to see the obvious connection, or you may have to use the continuity tester of your volt-meter to find them. Once found, you now know where to solder the red and black wires of a JST connector (found here: http://www.thecustomsabershop.com/JS...tors-P360.aspx) to. The other end goes to the 4.5v to 5v DC power supply.

When you mount the sabers on the wall, 2 of the cat-6 cable conductors will also get a JST connector set - making those two cat-6 cable conductors a REALLY long JST extension.

This will allow you to test your Saber Battery Pack wiring on your work bench, and also allow you to put up and take down sabers from the sconces easily.

In the end, you will have 8 cat-6 cables, each with a JST connector on 2 wires (use the same colored pair, please). You then need to put 8 matching connectors on your power supply and away you go.

All additional saber modifications can be made later when you are ready.

[RM SAMURAI]

DC connector.jpg
I was thinking of using something like this for my connections.

Do you recommend a certian DC adapter. I would like to get one that can drive them all at once. Not seperate ones for each saber.

[Silver Serpent]

Just find one that can supply at least 3-4 amps of power (rough estimate). That should be enough to power a good number of sabers. If it has adjustable voltage, that's fine. Just be sure you can select a voltage close to 4.5v.

[RM SAMURAI]

Ok thanks

[RobInMN]

Just checked back since I posted my pictures, and found this thread.
The 2 minute time-out is the killer when trying to use the original boards. There appears to be a computer chip embedded on the back of each board under a dome of black plastic or some sort and the timeout appears to be controlled in there.
The thing with trying to "trick" the saber to stay on via the clash seonsor is that when it is triggered, the blade flashes, which could be distracting.
We tried poking around on the board for a while, trying to short different circuit pathways and never found a magical solution that would prevent the time-out, so that's when we decided to scrap using it.
We did go the very simple route and wire all the blade segments together, such that there is no sequence, all on, all off. We actually ran cat-6 in the wall incase we did come up with something to sequence them, but in the end, we did not go that route. If you can find a controller or build one, that would definately be a cooler solution. The company I was working with thought it might get a little pricy to start going the route of building some kind of controller to sequence them.
I know almost zilch about these NB's or what they do, don't do. If they help in that fashion, go fot it!
I am not 100% sure what all the components are, but the theater company did utilize a digital doorbell or something that plays WAVs wired to a speaker interrupt (like a PA that overrides Muzak in an office) that plays the startup & shutdown saber souds through the side pair of speakers. Somehow the "doorbell" thing is wired to the switch that turns the sabers on & off such that the startup sound is played when the switch turns on and the shutdown is played when they are turned off. As cool as this is when showing it off, it's actually kind of annoying on a day-to-day level. The theater company programmer said hes got a prgoramming update to turn that feature on & off. Had I planned ahead, I would have tried to capture the sounds from the sabers, but I didn't and just downloaded MP3s from the internet and converted them to WAV files. If you could isolate & digitize the on/off from each saber and play that back through an embedded speaker in each hilt, that would be really cool. Had we figured out a way to use the original boards, that would have been the result. As it is, it wasn't worth the added time & expense to go back and righ that up once the hilts were gutted.
Someone suggested replacing all the LEDs with 3-color ones to phase into a white light. I see where they are going with that, but in our lighting scheme, the lightsaber sconces are not used in "movie mode". For regular movie watching, we just have the ceiling rope light and the step rope light (safety) on for the ambient light, and that's plenty of light. If you wanted to do this with just the sabers and no other lighting, that may work, but you may still want a dimmer, they create more light than you might think. Also, they don't appear to create a color shift. Maybe that because I have 3 red, 2 green, & 2 blue (RGB!), but other than reflective surfaces, I don't feel that areas of the room are more red or blue or green depending on how close I am to the different blades. Seems counter-intuative to me.
I think that covers everything. If you have any questions about what we did/didn't do ask me, I subscribed to the thread.

[RM SAMURAI]

I wanted to be able and keep the sequences. But this seams to be a major pain. I really didn't want to have to gut the sabers, but it is looking like this might be the cheapest. I have found a few places where people have mentioned using a ic timer. But they never explain how.

[RM SAMURAI]

I am still hard at work on this.