Makototsai's purple LED saber

[Mazarill Slay]

Ooooo shiney!!!!

[Sairon]

lemoel his leds are different. if you can find his style of led in north america than I will like it. his viewing angles and brighness rival hyperdynes while we have okay leds.

[eastern57]

lemoel his leds are different. if you can find his style of led in north america than I will like it. his viewing angles and brighness rival hyperdynes while we have okay leds.

well, we can't be sure of that... yet, but we'll see some day

I'll reiterate the point of LED batch: finding the right brightness and viewing angle isn't hard, it's finding a distributor that can offer same batch LEDs. Otherwise - multi-colored corn-on-the-cob...

Makoto is just in a unique position to get them - BUT he said he's been working for YEARS to get it right (since like 03 I think)... Either way, He's in Taipei - we're here... and it will still be a difficult search, but don't give up! We're really close, we have the technique, we have the motivation, know-how and creativity... we just need the right materials... i.e. Same Batch LEDs

[Logan Cade]

Thanks Eastern,

I’ve been reading all your posts, here and on other forums, and I agree with your statement.

I ordered a 100 of these LED’s that Sairon recommended and they arrived today.

http://www.ledshoppe.com/Product/led/LE1011.htm

Hopefully by this weekend I’ll get some time and chain and solder about 10 of them together and see what they can do.
They don’t seem much brighter then those Ebay ones I was playing with but they have a greater viewing angle which is very noticeable. On their site they don’t mention what the MA’s should be, so I’m going to start about 20 and push it to about 30 and see what happens.

[eastern57]

Cool. Reds seem to be those only ones (that I've encountered) that burn out. I'm sure they all can, but reds are more prone to it.

May I offer you a suggestion? When you're assembling them, start by bending the LEDs in phases: spread legs on all; cartoon-guy-on-a-horse them all, measure the legs & bend into hooks for all... see what I'm getting at?

What this does is allows you to maintain a quality control on the consistancy of each individual LED. It's really easy to drift and vary the bending... especially if you're watching tv while you're doing it [guilty]

And, if you're going to do a few at a time, keep that consistent also, 10 here, 10 there... again, it makes it easier to keep track of how many.

[Logan Cade]

Well, I found some time to play around with these new RGB LED’s and once again, not very impressive.

http://www.ledshoppe.com/Product/led/LE1011.htm

I made a chain of 10 of them and threw all different voltages and amps at them with my power supply, but really no better then a LUX 3. Colors were good but washed out when overdriven over 30 ma.

Maybe my sample run of 10 is not enough to do it justice, perhaps running a whole blade length chain would appear different, but that’ll require quite a few hours of tedious labor with only hope as the basis to continue.

Trying to find high intensity (mcd) led’s has proved to be difficult with all the lies and exaggerated claims, these were claiming 5000-6000 mcd per color which I find very hard to believe. I’m thinking of pursuing led’s with a greater viewing angle, these claimed 40 degrees which were better then my first attempt with led’s that claimed only 25 degrees.

[eastern57]

As far as I know - makoto has only compared his sabers to MRs - not luxeons or any other LED star emitters. But also, Yes, a whole blade DOES make a difference when testing them... unlike a short blade for a luxeon - the more LEDs you string together the more light it will produce... that sounds ridiculously obvious, but it's a concept that escaped me until I made a full length blade...

[Novastar]

To Eastern you listen... it's true that the more LEDs (a.k.a. more light sources)... the more light there is, and the better it will be overall to the interpretation the eyes make.

To some extent, it's also true that the closer the LEDs, the better, the more LEDs in that tighter space the better.

This may be obvious but--it's part of the reason the Yoda FX saber is (as far as I've been able to assess) better than the older, Luke one. More LEDs... and in a shorter blade no less!

Still, the OTHER sad fact of the matter is... the more LEDs... the faster it will suck the batteries down like a bloody Hoover deluxe.

Ok, more like a Dyson these days.

[Logan Cade]

Well, I guess there’s only one-way to find out…. And you guys talked me into it.

I’ll let you know how it turned out in a couple weeks.

Quick question for any of you who have played with this before:

Lets say this works and I’m happy with the results.
Lets also say I’m running a chain of, oh I don’t know, lets say 60 led’s in parallel.
60 led’s x 20ma =1.2 amps with forward voltages ranging from 2.1-2.4 for red and 3.3-3.6 for blue and green, what would you use to control this in a saber?

And by control, I mean being able to adjust different voltages and amperage so you could tweak different colors.

[Jedi-Diah]

Could you use an Ultrasound 2.0 or CF? You could choose your battery packs (voltage) and set the current from 700mA to 1500mA (with a few inbetween). You just wouldn't have the scrolling ignition/retraction if you wanted it.

Well, I guess there’s only one-way to find out….
And by control, I mean being able to adjust different voltages and amperage so you could tweak different colors.