Corbin Wiring Diagrams

[Lord Dottore Matto]

From this thread:



Thanks, LDM. I just tried the wiring I posted above, and it seems to work perfectly without a voltage regulator. Nothing seemed to be getting hot, the Lux looks good, the Corbin V2 is working fine... Am I looking at trouble down the road if I don't use a voltage regulator?

Well, you may. I did the same on Cuprum. It ran fine for about a week, then started to dim as the board started to go. I have since added a regulator and it works well. I'd say play it safe and add the regulator.

[Matt Thorn]

Well, you may. I did the same on Cuprum. It ran fine for about a week, then started to dim as the board started to go. I have since added a regulator and it works well. I'd say play it safe and add the regulator.

Aha. That's good to know. Thanks for the heads up. Do you know what kind of regulator I would need exactly? I've never used one before.

EDIT: I've done a bit of studying. The voltage regulator shown in one of the wiring diagrams at the beginning of this thread is a 7805. 4aa batteries (6v) should give the Corbin the 6v necessary for the shimmer effect, but from what I've read, it seems a 7805 needs 7v or more to work properly. Will this be a problem? Or will the sound board be safe as long as it is getting no more than 5v? (Or, to put it another way, will the sound board be okay even it's not getting 5v?) When I took apart the AOTC Anakin, it looked to me like it was wired so that the sound board was getting 6v, while the EL driver was getting 9v. But since my knowledge of electronics is close to nil, I may have misunderstood what I was seeing.

[Lord Dottore Matto]

Matt, you seem to have a very good feel actually. The regulator goes between the batteries and the board. It does not affect the Driver. That board needs 3.7V or more (but no more than 6V).

[Matt Thorn]

Matt, you seem to have a very good feel actually. The regulator goes between the batteries and the board. It does not affect the Driver. That board needs 3.7V or more (but no more than 6V).

Great. Thanks for the confirmation. I'll get hold of one.

[Matt Thorn]

So I want something like this for my AOTC Anakin conversion?

[Matt Thorn]

Bump.
I've set it up this way, and I get nothing. Nada. Zip. I've checked, and all the connections seem to be solid and where they should be. It's odd, because when I tested it before adding the voltage regulator, it seemed to work fine. I'll keep checking, but if any of you veteran electricians see something wrong with my wiring diagram, I'd be grateful if you could let me know.

[Lord Dottore Matto]

Matt, try this hope it works for you but I am just not sure with that board

[Matt Thorn]

Thanks, LDM! I'll give it a try.

[Matt Thorn]

Well, I got about half a second of the start-up sound, then silence. The LED and Corbin are now working fine (with the original wiring of the diagram I posted), but I can't get a peep out of the sound board. I tried switching speakers, changing switches, using a different battery pack (4.8 v).... Nothing works. I think it may be fried, though there was no smoke or odor, and nothing looks fried. Either way, I'm getting kind of sick of trying to get this board to work. I was hoping to sell it with the original sound board (in working order), but now I'm thinking of using a 2005 Mace Windu board instead. I wanted to use that one for another project, but the only other option I can think of is using a cheap old Hasbro board (and all of those, of course, have serious shortcomings). It's particularly disappointing, since it was actually working for a while. I think this board is probably just too fragile and fickle. These original EL sabers MR made are interesting curiosities today, but they were certainly weren't made to last, were they?

Having said all that, I think the wiring diagram is valid, so hopefully this will prove to be helpful to someone who is trying the same thing.

[Matt Thorn]

I happened to acquire another AOTC Anakin, with a working board, so I replaced the board. Bingo. The original wiring diagram LDM offered (with the ground wire attached to the regulator) works perfectly. Thanks again, LDM! Still not sure what fried the original board, though.