Wiring check

[Kael-Duvar Hawkens]

Lightsaber wiring diagram.jpg

Above is my wiring diagram for my new saber. I've done a couple saber hookups before but I wanted to make sure that I had things right before getting started. My primary wish is for the LED switch to be on when the kill key isn't in the recharge port. My biggest concern is that I have things properly wired so as not to burn out the LED on the switch. Otherwise I'm fairly certain of everything else.

[Greenie]

Well I'm not familiar with buck pucks and how they regulate current but the switch LED only requires about 30mA at most so I would guess it needs a resistor. I used the 20mA dynaohm resistor, available in the store,

[Silver Serpent]

There are a few issues with your diagram.

1. The buckpuck is on the wrong side of your M-to-L converter.
2. With parallel wiring, your buckpuck is only giving ~330 mA to each LED die. (1000mA / 3)

I would toss the buckpuck out of your build entirely, and use appropriate resistors for each LED die.

3. You will need a resistor on your switch LED as Greenie said. Either calculate an appropriate value resistor, or use the DynaOhm.

[PhoenixHawk]

Agreed with what's above....also can understand the JST clip for the Battery, but there is no need for them on the LED's.(they will take up a lot of space in the body of your saber...let the cram-fu begin) Because you will never have to replace them ...unless you blow them by not having the right resistors.

[FenixFire]

Agreed with what's above....also can understand the JST clip for the Battery, but there is no need for them on the LED's.(they will take up a lot of space in the body of your saber...let the cram-fu begin) Because you will never have to replace them ...unless you blow them by not having the right resistors.

Or overheat them by not having a proper heat-sink / thermal transfer.

[Greenie]

But if you wish to swap the LED module for a different colour set up.........

[Kael-Duvar Hawkens]

Ok so I've added the resistor to the LED switch and removed the buck puck. and Greenie is right that I want to be able to switch out both the LED switch and blade LED without having to rewire everything. I've put the two royal blue LED's into series, should I have all 3 be in series and just have a long wire run out of LED module from the (-) of the second blue LED into the needed resistors to get the purple I want then back into the LED module and attach at the red (+) then complete the series? Lightsaber wiring diagram2.jpg

[Silver Serpent]

If you wire the two blue in series, you'll need a 7.4v battery pack to run your setup. If you have all three dice wired in parallel, then a single 3.7v cell will suffice.

If you wire all three in series, you won't be able to adjust the shade of purple that you get. There's no way to tweak a single LED die in a series setup.

I would personally leave all three dice in parallel, and give each die its own resistor.

[Kael-Duvar Hawkens]

Ok well I am planning to get a 7.4v battery pack anyway so I'll probably just leave the two royal blue in series and have them parallel to the red so I can adjust my color as need be.

[Kael-Duvar Hawkens]

I just calculated the needed resistors and I want to make sure that I have it right.
So I'm going to have the two royal blue in series and they require a 0.5ohm 3w resistor, which I planned to have in there anyway.
For the red I'm calculating that it would require a 3.9ohm 10w resistor which seems high to me, but since I'm gonna be experimenting with different resistor combo's to get the shade of purple that I want do I ignore this calculation or will I need to take this into account.
-Math below please tell me if I calculated something wrong-
royal blue (2 in series)
R=[7.4v-(3.41v+3.41v)]/1.4A=0.41ohm
P=0.41ohm*1.4A^2=0.8036W
{so I need a 0.5ohm 3w resistor}
red (single)
R=[7.4v-2.59v]/1.4A= 3.4ohm
P=3.4ohm*1.4A^2=6.64W