Using a rumble motor with a MR sound card

[recif77]

Hi all,

I would like to know if anyone has ever tried to add a rumble motor to a MR sound board based saber?
What I would like to do is to have the motor working only during the clash effect. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

[Lord Dottore Matto]

Hmmmm...I would wire it in series with the clash sensor. It may not give you the exact effect that you want however. You can easily run a motor with an MR if you want it on all the time however.

[Caine Drathul]

If you do decide to run a motor, I would just wire it to the board with the appropriate resistor. Yes, it will be on all the time, but like LDM said, it may not respond the way you want (those little buggers are temperamental). I have wired many a motor to an MR board like that.

Also, make sure you mount it properly so it doesn't come undone and short out. Again, been there, done that.

[recif77]

Yes indeed, I was considering to wire it directly to the board, but I would prefer it not to have a "flat" behaviour.
I was also wondering, if the MR board has as a kind of flickering on the led output, what if I wire the motor in parallel with the main LED?

[Caine Drathul]

Yes indeed, I was considering to wire it directly to the board, but I would prefer it not to have a "flat" behaviour.
I was also wondering, if the MR board has as a kind of flickering on the led output, what if I wire the motor in parallel with the main LED?

The MR board has no flicker. If you wire it in parallel with the LED it will behave the same (although it may draw a bit too much from your LED and may cause dimming, that's why I suggested wiring it to the board. If you wire it from the LED's positive and the board's negative, that would be fine, too...but again, it would constantly be on..and don't forget the resistor)

What kind of motor/battery solution you have?

[cannibal869]

Ideally, it'd be nice to have some kind of PCB or circuit, which is activated by a momentary switch (or in this case, the clash sensor). When activated, then it plays a 2 second music clip or something (except now we've wired it up to the motor instead of a speaker).... something kinda like a doorbell...

would a power extender work? Never used or had one, so I'm just rambling now...

[Rafalema]

The power Xtender could actually work..

[recif77]

Do you mean Erv's power extender?
That's a good idea. I'll keep that in mind.

[Novastar]

You don't need a power extender to run a small motor. If that is what is being inferred.

Also... let's see--when wiring a motor:

* Don't connect both leads to the LED leads... it will "leech" from the current going to the LED. Instead, if you want it to "match" an LED (in any case, CF, US, direct drive, Hasbro/FX, whatever)... wire one lead the battery and the other to the LED.

* Most motors need only something like 40mA to 200mA to run. That's a wide range, you need to know the specs of your own motor (specs of ALL of your parts for that matter!!!). Resist as needed, and don't be feeding a motor... like... 500mA or an amp!!! That's waaaaaay too much. Even 200mA would be a "hungry/wasteful" motor...

* Wiring a motor into an MR/Hasbro clash circuit is generally not ideal for one major reason. The circuit only closes/opens for such a SUPER brief amount of time... the motor will barely spin.

In order to try to "fix" that... you might need something like a 555 or 556 timer circuit to help keep a circuit open/closed for a more controllable time. It SHOULD work.

Back in like 2008/2009, I was hoping to get Do-Clo and/or Gravy to help set up some kind of thing like this to create both a good motor setup... AND a possible "flash on clash" for MR/Hasbro boards... but it never happened. Ran out of time and/or resources...