FX Anakin EP2 soundboard.

[Matt Thorn]

Here's the promised photo. I think it should not be difficult to decipher.

I will probably use a 4aaa pack (4.8v), and will have to make a common positive lead from the battery pack to the sound board and the LED. (As it is, the EL driver is wired to get 9v.) You may be able to see that the yellow leads from the switch both lead to the EL driver. (The yellow wire in the central pair of posts is joined to the positive lead from the battery pack, the yellow wire from the upper/forward pair of posts was attached directly to the EL driver board.)

Any suggestions?

[Matt Thorn]

Wow. That was so easy, even I could do it. I'll post a wiring diagram soon. Basically, you replace the 6aa pack with a 4aaa pack; have the sound board and the Luxeon share the positive lead from the battery; attach one of the yellow wires from the switch to the negative lead of the Luxeon, and the other yellow wire to the negative lead on the sound board that had formerly led to the EL driver. Does that make sense? Who knew it could be so easy? Of course, now I have to get it all to fit snugly into the hilt. For that, I'll have to wait for my Darth Maul conversion kit to arrive from TCSS. In the meantime, I'm going to try to find some way to make those red and green decorative "lights" on the side of the hilt actually light up. It'll have to be a pretty compact solution, because it will have to fit between the inner wall of the hilt and the aluminum tube of the conversion kit.

This is fun. And then I'll sell the thing for a huge amount of money on Yahoo! Auctions Japan.

[Matt Thorn]

Here's the promised wiring diagram. I'll post it over on the "Cutaway views and wiring schematics" forum. After I have the necessary parts for putting everything in the hilt, I'll post a tutorial.

Here's the EL board that is amputated and discarded (or kept as a paperweight: it's heavy.)


P.S.: Since I've never seen an LE in operation (except in videos), I was disappointed that I couldn't get this one to work. Although it looks horrible in the clear blade (They could have at least used a white blade, or a sanded blade--it just looks like a rolled up length of paper in the blade), the technology seems pretty cool to me, particularly after reading Jedi Loreen's explanation. The first thing that struck me when I opened the saber was the pungent, chemical smell. It seems to come from the EL sheet. I wonder if that's the smell of the phosphorus. Compared with Master Replica's later work, you can tell they were winging this one. I suppose it was the first commercially produced "real lightsaber". Certainly light years ahead of the toy lightsaber I had back in 1977(?), but quaint by today's standards. I'm not so in love with the Episode II Anakin saber that I'll want to keep this one, but it is fun to work with.

[ARKM]

That is an excellent diagram and just what I needed to salvage my Anakin saber sound board for use in another hilt. Too bad I can no longer find the motion sensor.

[Matt Thorn]

That is an excellent diagram and just what I needed to salvage my Anakin saber sound board for use in another hilt. Too bad I can no longer find the motion sensor.

There's probably some way to replace the motion sensor with a different one. But I think first you'd have to figure what the third wire on this sensor is for. I don't recall ever seeing another sensor with three wires. I have a feeling that thick wire set-up has something to do with shielding the wires from the electromagnetic noise generated by the EL film tube the wires pass through in the original setup. Jedi Loreen might understand this better.

[Matt Thorn]

For anyone else who might be interested, I did a bit of experimenting and found the (very simple) answer, which I posted here.

[Cern]

Hmm. i just bought a board off ebay listed as an AOTC Anakin board. it has the speaker, sound board, and 6aa battery pack all in one unit. is this the same thing?

I figured it would save me time soldering. guess not huh?

[Skottsaber]

I guess we'll have to see the pictures before we can identify the board.

[Kal El Rah]

Hmm. i just bought a board off ebay listed as an AOTC Anakin board. it has the speaker, sound board, and 6aa battery pack all in one unit. is this the same thing?

I figured it would save me time soldering. guess not huh?

Does it look like Matts setup, if it does, then it's the same, they did make 2 versions on the aotc saber, v1 sucked big time, v2 still had problems.

p.s. 1+ year necro post ressurection

[Cern]

sorry it took me so long to post pix. finally started actually working on this thing last night, and cant make head nor tails of what to wire where:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4080/...56c2f497_b.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4098/...f389c6de_b.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4094/...9b2859ea_b.jpg