Battery for Neopixel blade

[Strydur]

Correct, Amperage ratings are often quite under rated.

[bill_fimm]

Yes. Though RC Port. Here is the rating on their dc charging ports:



5amps rated. If one of the tabs on RC port were to give way and melt (which I doubt), I'd rather a failure occur there. The boards are also carrying the load. The internal traces on the board are much thinner than the legs on the port. I believe that industry, for their safety must underestimate rating, and over-estimate draw of components. That and the neopixels strips ideally run at higher voltage than most of us are actually using in them. We are using lower voltage.

I still think the biggest issue/change with neopixels will be the MAH. They will eat a lot of juice quicker than in-hilt LEDs. IMO that will be the big change.

Tom

Thanks for the reply Tom. If the worse case would be the port melting, like you said is not likely, thats cool. I’ll give that recharge port a shot. Since I am new to this hobby I really don’t know much. I would just be afraid if you said something like it could cause the battery to blow up or something. Thanks again sir.

[Jacobpac]

Anyone have an approximate run time for the Panasonic 18650 3.7v 10 battery for a neo pixel blade?

[Forgetful Jedi Knight]

From what I’ve been advised, it’s about 35-45 minutes.

[Tom Tilmon]

If you hit a load that high, with the thin traces on these sound boards, I'd suspect you'd fry a soundboard first, and the saber would shut off. None of the many who have already made these sabers are experiencing that, and neopixels have been around in saber usage now for over a year. But now TCSS has brought a simple socket solution to the masses, so we shall see how this goes. I think we'll be fine. I'm proceeding on as planned.

Tom

[bill_fimm]

Thank you for the info everyone. I appreciate the help.

[jbkuma]

Your run time will vary greatly by your color. If you think of it like three 4amp LEDs (approximately) instead of three 1amp LEDs of a Cree you'll get an idea. Your battery will last about 1/4 the ignited blade time you would get from a tri-cree setup with the same color combinations.

If you are running just one color (red, green or blue) fully on it will run about 3 times longer than if you have all three fully on (white). For a single color: 3200mah / 4amps = about .8 hours, or 48 minutes. Things are a bit more complicated than this since the saber isn't going to run properly over the full discharge curve of the battery and there other effects at play. In the real world, depending on your color combinations, you'll probably get around 30 minutes of illuminated blade time.