Mr board current

[gundamaniac]

Alrighty, I'm gonna try my 1000mA buckpuck then. A question though- Should I re-use my LuxIII (1000mA) or keep the K2 (1500 mA)?

[Jay-gon Jinn]

I'd probably stick with the Lux III, and save the K2 for another project.

[Novastar]

Agreed with Jay-Gonn.

When K2s first came out, Corbin and I installed one into the original Flange saber. Granted, it was nice (since it was the only green we'd yet seen)... but I'm sure it was being under-driven because we were using the MR board w/ a 5v regulator and 7.2 Li-Ion.

The K2 "dark sides" are 700ma though... keep that in mind. You could probably push THOSE to 1A... but I've no idea how much more brightness (if any) would come of it. In some (note: I said "some") cases, moving further up past the suggested "max continuous current"... won't do much more than reduce the LED life and cause more heat... and for what? Maybe a 5% increase. Whee.

Essentially... for MOST people... for those who don't have 20 years electronic experience... sticking with the suggested fwd v and current suggestions... is best!

[gundamaniac]

K, I've hooked it up to a buckpuck powered off the MR. I dunno if that'll really help...maybe I should have hooked up the buckpuck to the batteries instead and used a DPDT...

[Jay-gon Jinn]

So you have the buckpuck wired to the led leads from the MR board? I have a similar set-up in my son's saber, using a micropuck and a Lux Star/O led. It seems to work well, that little led is as bright as my Lux III I have runig direct off and MR board. THe only difference I can think of though, is that the micropuck is a "boost" puck....but I'm not sure if the buckpuck is.

[gundamaniac]

I don't believe the buckpuck is a boost puck. So in the end, I think mine is doing nothing....

On the upside, I timed a 50-min. runtime last night, way up from the 30-40 mins I had before. I have a couple theories on this...One is that the buckpuck is doing something....the other is that it's the nimh batteries. This is approximately the 4th charge for these sets of batteries; I have 3 set of 4 batteries for my saber. I read that nimh batteries don't reach full operating capability until appox. their 3rd charge...so it would sort of make sense that the batteries are now supplying something closer to what they should, which is an hour of life at 1000mA, rather than the pathetic half-hour I had earlier. So my theory is I'm seeing better times thanks to either the puck in there now, or the batteries becoming conditioned or whatever after a couple charges.

Either way, my battery life is up, and though it's not two hours or whatever, I'm happy. As long as it ain't a weeny 30 mins, I'm good.

[Novastar]

This is correct in the concept that many battery cells vary from charge to charge and (some) require a few "warmup/break-in" charges to get a good idea of the overall average mah the batteries are going to be delivering. Depending on how much resistance is going on--suggested or factory "determined" battery life/hours can vary greatly.