LED Engin RGBA wiring, Each Die on Seperate Switches

[bigkevin61]

Hello all!
I'm a Saber Building (and electronics) noob, BUT I've been scouring the inter-webs, and particular this forum, for as much info as I can find, in regards to this particular question.
(and YES, I have been trying an un-godly number of different search term variants before deciding to post this)

I've seen saber builders produce a product that takes a multi-die LED (such as a LED Engin, or Luxeon Tri-Rebel), and wires it so that each Die is controlled by it's own latching switch, giving the wielder the ability, at the press of a button (more specifically a combination of several buttons), to change the color of their blade, by turning on/off each die. I realize that this may be a bit "old school", as a number of sound boards now have "color mixing" technology, but those are a bit more expensive, and still involve adjusting/saving settings, and the best I've found, still require a blade retraction/ignition to load a new "sound bank" (and a different color).

Unless it is some sort of trade secret, I was hoping to use this thread to work through the different wiring possibilities, so that others like me would have a (hopefully easy to find) resource.

I'll start with the basics (a theme I learned from reading the forums).

1) "Stunt" Saber Resistor setup
Assumptions:
a) Wiring the die in parallel.
b) Using the Manufacturer's "Typical" forward Voltages (from http://www.ledengin.com/files/produc...LZ4-00MA00.pdf).
c) Using resistors calculated (at the 1%) from an online calculator (here http://www.hobby-hour.com/electronics/ledcalc.php).
(I realize these may be odd values, but this is just to check a wiring diagram)

Here is the diagram:
LED Engin RGBA Stunt.jpg
I would appreciate confirmation to whether this is a "correct" setup, from a electrical standpoint, and feedback to other possibilities to achieve the same goal (IE, a BuckPuck version?) that I can then include new diagrams.

Thanks!
bigkevin61

[Silver Serpent]

It'll work just fine. The only real concern is how much space all of those switches will take up.

[bigkevin61]

Thanks Silver Serpent.

So, I've been trying to learn as much as I can about the electrical side of saber building.
From what I can tell, resistors will work fine, but having a managed current system in place (ie, BuckPuck) would perform more efficiently, and retain a stable color/brightness output as the DC battery voltage fluctuates (drops with use).
Would there be a way to run the above with a single BuckPuck?
I believe that you could NOT, and you would need one for each Die (as each is controlled by a latched switch, which then gets quite expensive).
If one wanted ALL 4 Die on all the time, (no switches) one BuckPuck would work, if the Die were wired in series, with a Supply Voltage greater ( by 2V+ according to the BuckPuck instructions) then the sum of the Forward Voltages of all the Die. But then you could not change on the fly.

[Silver Serpent]

On a single buckpuck? You couldn't do it effectively. You'll need to wire the LEDs in parallel in order to switch them on and off individually. If you do that with 4 LEDs, you'll be sharing the 1000mA of the puck across all four LEDs (each gets 250mA). The current would increase to each LED as you shut off others, giving you a really bright single-color saber, but a very dim multi-color saber.

Stick with resistors for this project. Four buckpucks would take up half your hilt.