Darth Vader ANH MPP 2.0 Kit + NBv4 + Tri Cree DR/R/W - First Build!

[Tom Tilmon]

So I will take your advise and bridge the neg & pos pads. That will reduce the wires through the hole to 4 instead of 6. Since I have to use 26AWG wire, space through the heatsink hold is limited.

Here is the setup I will use.

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Your bridge diagram is correct in this photo (with the positive feeds), which is MY method. Each negative pad on LED star needs its own wire and resistor. DO NOT BRIDGE the negatives on the LED star if you bridge the positives! There are several ways to do this to arrive at the same place. Your original method will work as well, except for the single resistor on both red diode lines.

So, either keep things the way you had them, but add separate resistor to the other red LED line, then common them up


OR

Tom's method: which is to bridge all the positives to a single wire that goes straight to battery +, and then independently wire your negative feeds for each LED. You can double up the red negative feeds after you add independent resistors to each! Think of those resistors as dams, which control how the water flows through the circuit. I visualize electricity like water, it flows. Resistors only allow so much water to get through the river at a given time period.

On a tri cree, you are controlling 3 rivers of electricity. All 3 rivers (power to each LED, or power from each LED) needs its own dam. After the river flows through the dam, its going to the ocean. You have controlled the flow, once the flow goes through that control, it all flows together at the same rate.

The 4 wires coming out of LED with the positives bridged:
1. Positive Wire with no resistor, feeds all LED positive pads! Destination + pad on Board with + line from RC Port.
2. Deep Red Diode negative wire with 1.2 ohm resistor. Destination L1 Pad
3. Red Diode negative wire with 1.2 ohm resistor. Destination L1 Pad Unless you're using power extender.
4. White Diode negative wire with .47 ohm resistor. Destination L2 Pad (FOC) Unless you're using power extender.

You can merge wires 2 and 3 AFTER you place a resistor on each of them. I typically leave the resistor tails long, and twist them together to solder to my single common wire, and shrink.

I'm reading all my previous posts, hoping I haven't confused you. How you wired it initially, when the wires fell off was kind of correct for that method, except for the fact that you didn't independently resistor your positive feeds from each red diode. You commoned them up to a single wire, and then put the resistor on, which you lose 1/2 the resistor value doing that, which means you will be over-driving your red and deep red diodes. That was your only error on your initial wiring, which is one way to do this.

My way is a different way of doing it. Which places the resistors on the negative legs. The water doesn't care where it gets dammed up at, its flow is restricted by the dam. Which is why I said negative or positive legs can be resistored, because the river flows through both. But you can't resistor both positive and negative legs, its either positive or negative. In your initial wiring of this LED, you had the positives resistored. Which is fine (except for notation about how you did that on the red positives). If you use my method, the positive wire feeding the positive bridges on the LED Star will get NO RESISTOR, because you will be resistoring each negative wire independently. That will regulate the water flow through each LED.

I hope this is all clear as mud. I have a Deep Red, Deep Red, White tri cree here on my saber that I'm going to solder up tonight to take pictures of to try and make this all photographically clear. Words seem to be eluding me to make sure I clarify this for you before you begin soldering! I've had a bad day at work today, so a soldering iron is calling my name!

Tom