2004 "Feel the Force" Obi-Wan Kenobi Electronic Lightsaber

[Rb-wan Organus]

Putting in a jumper wire does work, I tried it on the Windo board I "thought" I fried last night.

[Matt Thorn]

Putting in a jumper wire does work, I tried it on the Windo board I "thought" I fried last night.

Pardon my noobness, but what is a "jumper wire" in this context? Is it simply forgoing the fuse and using a bit of wire to make a direct connection?

[Angelus Lupus]

Bingo! You got it.

[Matt Thorn]

Bingo! You got it.

Thanks!

[Matt Thorn]

Hasbro has yet to build the board I can't kill. Following RB-wan Organus' advice, I soldered on a jumper wire and was back in action. But of course, instead of leaving well enough alone, I tried once again to hook the leads for the motor to the leads for the LED in order to override the flash-on-clash effect. It had seemed to work before, but that was with the LEDs that came with the toy, not a Luxeon III. This time, thanks to the absence of a fuse, I did get smoke and smell. The offended party was a three-pronged black doohickey with the catchy name "K 444 C8050 C".

Well, fella, I'm not too thrilled with your wiring, either, so there. (Guess I put him in his place.)
After chilling a bit, I found things had gone topsy-turvy. When I press the switch, the sound behaves normally, but the Luxeon flashes three times, then turns off. I press the switch again, I get the "fire-down" sound, the three flashes, and silence (as you would expect), but the Luxeon stays on! In short (no pun intended), the Luxeon is on when it should be off, and off when it should be on.

Lesson learned: I have a startling inability to learn from my mistakes.

[Novastar]

Don't beat yourself up, Matt. As Billy Joel would say, mistakes are the only things that you can truly call your own.

Besides that... my guess is that the Hasbro boards were never meant to handle 1A, whereas the MR boards are a bit hardier.

Also, I believe that the fuse saying "125v" is just the maximum it could probably handle and "guarantee" to protect whatever it is supposed to protect. Best guess. It's not that you're supposed to feed it 125v or something...

[Jedi-Loreen]

That's a transistor.

[Novastar]

Oops! There ya go--another mistake for me!!! I assumed when people said it was the fuse, they were right, heheh. :P D'oh.

Doesn't matter anyhow--at first I thought it was possibly the motion/clash sensor, so... that's TWO mistakes right there!!!

[Jedi-Loreen]

It might have smoked because it was getting too much current because of the jumper replacing the fuse. Which probably blew for a reason........

[Matt Thorn]

It might have smoked because it was getting too much current because of the jumper replacing the fuse. Which probably blew for a reason........

Indeed it did blow for a reason, which was my hooking together the leads for the LED and the motor. Twice. That's what I get for trying to make this board do something it wasn't made to do.

Novastar, they were right about the silver thingy in my first photo being a fuse. And that fuse was protecting the black thingy in my last photo, which, thanks to Jedi-Loreen, I now know is a transistor.

Learning that inspired me to do some studying on transistors, so I've lost my Hasbro board (and some money), but increased my knowledge a bit. I'd call it a wash.

Next up: the Clone Wars Ultimate Lightsaber Kit, which should arrive at my door tomorrow. You can be sure I'll treat that board with much more respect and caution than I did this one.