hi everyone,
as you guess I've been contacted by a bunch of you guys about this
After moving and working close to 4 months in the house, I now have a temp lab installed and I'm back to props electronics (yeah, I know, I have a batch of something to make, but I can't remember what it is... think it starts with C., something about a crystal... mmmm).
sharing a few thoughts here. First is to send some congratulations to makotosai. Like other blades out there which were claimed to be huge research and innovation, we a nice alternative to what is possible. LED strips aren't new, but MR design targeted a mass market and therefore chose cheap leds, not special ones and more over, they had to deal with power supplies (what would a kid think of a saber lasting 10 minutes instead of 4 hours).
This is not reducing the work of makotosai. HB leds, wide angle or not, are there for a while but I'm happy that the DIY spirit shows up here and provides people a simple way to upgrade a saber or create a blade.
I've never liked the PCB thing. MR ones isn't that bad but suffers from what any PCB have : it's flexible, true but the copper layers are so thin that it would crackle at a moment or another. Remember also that's it's a cheap PCB and that many layer are running thru it (6 segments). Plus each LED has a resistor attached to it in the blade which gives 64 reasons for the blade to have problems. Most of the time, it's a resistor that goes away (poor soldering + bending blade), not the LED itself, despite it also happens.
Remember that PCB tracks are like 35 µm thick, only deluxe PCBs are 70µm and even that remains freaking thin.
Some would say "yes, but it works and it's duelable". Yep... but it's a question of design attitude and point of view. I personnally think it's useless to use 4A to drive the double number of LED which requires a PCB, and on the top of that use retarded batteries supposed to give only 1A on a normal and reasonnable use. Yep, it "sort of works". I'd say it lights up, but it's not designing electronics.
About a year ago, I demonstrated the possibility to obtain an extremely bright blade with... the stock MR blade, removing the onboard resistors on the PCB (shunting them) and there's also a segment on which I've used wide angle. I was using then a custom version of my CF board.
Here's the video link
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=oHLkznIpZKE
Like many things I've worked on, I moved to something else once it's been demoed, I'm sorry about that, CF and blaster core home manufacturing just consumed my time.
I'm very happy there's an interest about that again, so makotosai, once again, thanks for sharing that, great job and bright sabers.
I think I still have enough leds I bought like 2 years ago to make a blade.
I'm definitly going to make a ledstrip version of CF, an equivalent of V4. This will include brightness regulation / servoing instead of those other blades on which it's up to the user to manually select it. There's won't be a brightness resolution as in CF with the luxeon current settings, but I'd say at least 20 levels.
I'll prone the use of 2 li-ion cells in the 18650 format, leading to a maximum current of the blade of 2400 mA for an at least 1 hour run, or more if the blade consumes less current.
Now, in my opinion, the effort must also be made in finding an alternative way for the blade itself, cause even if retrofitting a MR blade is nice, I like the idea that we can source our own supplies instead of relying on the ebay aftermarket.
Solutions :
- Thin walled 1" polycarb blade + appropriate white LDPE diffuser
- thick walled 1" + TCSS diffuser (reduced space in the diffuser, not easy to fit LEDs + foam, to be tried)
foam diffuser replacement : when I tested 1 year ago, I got good results with wooden floors undercoating foam, extremely cheap.
Hyperblade comparison vs HB makotosai style blades : If you've seen the videos and the posts of Eandori with the luxeon vs hyperblade comparisons, you might know that a couple of those are travelling the world and will end in my labs. The original owner wanted to get rid of them, however I funded him a bit this since it's been more than helpfull and informative.
Just in case, for those who would like to say I'm getting those blades to analyse them for digital recast, be sure I won't copy a poor design with retarded battery setup. There's nothing "secret" with the HBlade. Twice the number of LEDs (or a little bit more), twice the voltage and... twice the weight. I'll never call that innovation. This does not remove anything to the fact someone built it and it's bright.
Results are not the final point when designing something, the elegance, quality and reliability count at least 50%. And taking 4A out of a 900mAh battery is everything except elegant, electronically speaking (even if the manufacturer says you can take 1.5 or 2C).
More soon,
Erv'
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) CF settings for the luxeon current is from 0 to 70 (70 <=> 1.5A) which gives a resolution of 21 mA per step, and for the led strip, this resolution will be less, leading to less "brightness steps". No big deal.
Originally Posted by erv
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