Saber Forum

So, as I have been doing with all the boards that don’t have flash on clash, I grabbed the wife’s Lib(with permission, of course) for the led swap and flash upgrade. When asked what color she wanted her blade the said teal(originally VA). “No problem”, was the reply, and I immediately knew what color her flash would be. I’ve been wanting to do a red flash for a while, and figured it would be especially striking against the light blue/green color of the blade. It was as easy and straightforward as one of these upgrades gets, for the most part. The first led died, or was dead, as some point. Skipping one of the most important rules of working with led’s, I didn’t check it first before I started, so I don’t know if it was dead from the git. None of them have been from this batch, but I didn’t follow protocol, so I can’t say if I killednit or not. Having blown two reds during testing I was weary to try it. Nevertheless, the second tested fine, and so I soldered it up. Multiple resistor combos were tried to get teal. Eventually, I settles on a 4.7 ohm for the blue, and green wired straight to the pos. Red has a 2.7 ohm, as this is the safest since I don’t have any other values between 2 and 3.3. All this being said, and without further adieu, here are the results...

https://youtu.be/pCIqCpDjTd0

As you can see, it’s friggin cool as $h1t!! I just love the lockup!! It’s mesmerizing. The dead spots are the batteries dying. Right after I finished shooting this I was playing around, and it straight up shut down. Lithium ions, what can I say. Overall, I think it’s STILL one of the coolest sabers in the house! Thanks everyone.

Very cool there, Gumby

Thanks Jinn!! And, I haven’t forgotten about you. I have an incredible selection of stuff set aside, ready to ship. I even included some of the custom dyed goatskin I made. It’s serious stuff, super supple, and beautiful. Should be getting it out this week.

Looks awesome man! That red really lights up the room when it flashes. Nice work on fine tuning the color!

Interesting. I like it. Closest to Red FoC, I get is Bane's Heart. Might have to play around with Blazing Red on my DC.

Such a rad upgrade there, Gumby.  Love your ideas with playing with the LEDs and resistors to help fine tune the colors that you want. Point incoming.

Thanks guys! So, charged the batts overnight and when I installed them and presented it to the wife I was shocked and saddened to see NO FOC!!! I took it into the shop and disassembled it real fast for a quick test before work: the red led is dead! I’m thinking because it’s wired on the side of the chip with the green, and the green is in resisted, it took an overcurrent and blew out. I won’t be home for a few days so there’ll be no immediate resolution. So sad to make a presentation and have it fail completely. She did like the teal blade color she requested very much, so I guess it’s not a total loss. I had to produce the video so I didn’t look full of $h1t.

No worries man. Yup, just make sure that each individual LED is resistor accordingly so that it won't have too much current and get blown within seconds. 

What’s funny is the red has a 2.7 ohm, which I believe is plenty of resistance for it. These leds were not expensive, and I’ve had relatively good luck with them so far. Good thing I’m a soldering whiz.👍🏽😀💩😜🦃

What battery set up are you using?  AAA or 14500?

14500. It’s the standard US Obsidian v4 li setup.

Looking forward to it, Gumby

Looks good in the video, hopefully when you get home you can get it sorted out.

Thanks Tx. Infinit and I have been discussing it over pm, and I think I have a plan. It’s one of those things about buying inexpensive parts, you just don’t know the build quality, could have been me, could have been a crappy part. Good news is I really like working is sabers, so ya.

Agreed, a lot of these places will get them mass produced in China where the parts are cheap and there will be a lot of DOAs or that the part gets burnt out since they're not up to specs like most LED units are.  Also, LED values differ from manufacture to manufacture as well.

I ordered a bunch of RGBW XML LEDs (think the same ones Ultrasabers uses) from an American website and in bulk off eBay from China. going to run some of the cheaper ones and see how they hold up, they're way cheaper than other ones I see online of the same brand

Let me know how it goes, I'm curious to see the performance.  Just like Gumby has come across them, there are good cheap LEDs, we just have to find them.

yeah same. luckily in regards to some of this, you can find info on parts from other hobbies. for example I had no idea the aftermarket flashlight modding community was so large, but they deal a lot with high power LEDs, heat sinks, batteries, stuck in a tube and there is lots of good info there. Also, the vape community deals a lot with Li-Ion batteries so there are lots of options there too, that's how I found the star wars themed battery heat shrink for my 18650's, it was a Vape shop

Haha, I too dived into the flashlight modding community myself as well as the Vape community since the wife vapes but she's not technically sound. 

the vape community is crazy with their modding. a little more gung-ho than I am with electronics; especially when it comes to Li-Ion hahaha. they're more thinking like "let's see how much power and battery life we can get before starting a fire"

I almost bought some of the radio shack 18650’s for vapes to see how theyd do. The thought of shooting leds out the emitter stopped me.

Agreed. They’re more about power and whatnot over safety from what I’ve dealt with.  The flashlight  guys and gals are more concerned with safety but still dive into performance

Great stuff, bro! I love that red flash with the teal blade.

Easy way to test LED dies: Grab 2 AA or AAA batteries, two lengths of wire with the ends stripped and tinned, and some electrical tape. Put the batteries end to end, attach the red to the positive and black to the negative and wrap it all tightly with electrical tape. Then, with the LED pointed somewhere besides at your face, touch the wires to the appropriate pads. (I usually shine them on a table) 3v is plenty to run a LED and not enough to damage it for a quick test. That saves you the pain of wiring it all up and finding out it's bad.

Ok, after desoldering all my leads off the blown star, adding an additional resistor to green, and a 7.3 ohm to the red I ended up with this!

https://youtu.be/7reb5dYAN2E

I call it Pigletlarue Blue w/orange creamsicle FOC!!!

looks cool man - nice and bright too! you're having a blast over there with resistors

Dude! Not as much as it might seem. I really did want the brilliant red I had at first. But, I’m down to only a few 3w RGBW’s, and I don’t want to use 1w ers for my Archon project. That being said, I have created some super cool colors!😎 Don’t think I don’t notice how much fun YOURE having on the cool projects you’ve got going on!!!👉🏼🤙🏻😱😜🤪😄😎🦃

to be honest I wouldn't have even thought to try resistors with an RGB LED to create a custom color, really opens up the color options just as much as if you had a blade controller. I'm nerding out so hard on assembling the electronics I've barely gotten to this stage yet, I need to slow down lol

I'm going back and reviewing my other builds and fine tuning things now - just starting to play with custom sounds and colors and I swear you could do this stuff forever

See, I haven’t even broached sound yet. I’ve got one v4 Obsidian board, and a couple other guys boards, but it’s difficult for me to wrap my head around. I guess one you get used to it, it’s easy, but, I haven’t figured it out yet.

Wiring them is pretty straight forward, you can usually find diagrams for US and other guys boards on their respective sites or forums somewhere. The Obsidian/Diamond are the easiest I've played with so far in terms of modifying the colors/sound from your PC. The software is super user friendly in terms of customizing them to bring in custom sounds.

In most cases you can usually find sound fonts (collection of sounds) online that are in a format that works for most if not all boards. Most of the fonts I've found are 22khz 16 bit mono and I think US uses 44khz for their Obsidian and Diamond boards so it definitely can support them without issue.

If you need help with anything let me know I'd be happy to help where I can!

Yup, the high or lower ohm ratings of a resistor can darken or lighten up an LED color; however, be careful not to go too low as the resistor is there to protect the LED from over current after all.  That's why drivers were designed but you can still play around with the color quite a bit before blowing the LED so just be careful with it.

Wiring has never been an issue, using the software properly is. Which is weird, as I am a professional technician, and deal with complex programming issues almost daily.