THE Battery Setup for Stunt stabers!

[RevanReborn]

Why am I not hearing praise proportional to the glorious'ness of this post lol?!  Bump.

No but seriously, thanks CJ, I'm absolutely doing this on my next project, my dark sentinel LE.   Ideally I'll be creating a mounted port something like what you mentioned, though it's also tempting to opt instead for the set up like Jed mentioned as well, skip the port in favour of something like quick disconnects, for quickly swapping precharged replacement banks .  Hmm.... I need to meditate on this lol...

[Venthros]

I just wanted to say that this is awesome. I just finished putting one of these in my SIBS grab bag and it worked perfectly. I will say that I saw no noticeable difference in brightness, but I think having the rechargeable battery bank is 1000000000% worth it.

Here's some pictures of what I did:

After removing the AAA battery pack, there was only about an inch of wire to work with, so instead of wiring directly to the USB connector, I used some of the old USB cord's wire. It actually turned out to be a little too much, but I was still able to neatly tuck the wire into the hilt so the bank will fit.


Here it is all connected. I connected. Like I said before...too much wire.


Here's the before (first) and after (second) pic. Like I said, not really much different if you ask me. Totally glad I decided to do this though.



Not pictured is the battery bank. I put a few of my girlfriend's hair ties around the battery bank to ensure a snug fit. Works like a charm.
Thanks for sharing the idea, CJ-Nihilus!

[RevanReborn]

Thanks for posting Venthros!  Great idea preserving the wiring from a usb cord to work as an adapter and make the soldering job simpler .  I'm going to be doing this to my stunt that i'm modding right now- can't wait.

[Venthros]

Thanks for posting Venthros!  Great idea preserving the wiring from a usb cord to work as an adapter and make the soldering job simpler .  I'm going to be doing this to my stunt that i'm modding right now- can't wait.

Let us know how you make out! As far as mods go, this one is pretty easy!

[Joshualee9871]

I'm interested in doing this with an initiate staff I'm thinking of ordering. I was wondering if these are small enough to slide in an initiate hilt? And also, this should just work with a AAA stunt setup right? With no other options? Like I don't have to worry about ordering the Li-ion with resistor? Just the basic set up. Do those come prewired with resistors? So I don't have to do anything else? Just order a saber with AAA setup and just snip off the battery pack and wire in a USB port?


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[RevanReborn]

Yeah, no matter what STUNT saber you were to order you'd be ok to make the swap, it wouldn't fry anything .  Your led will already be resistored appropriately when US sends it to you, and the power banks pretty much all put out the same 5V, seems to be a standard- so actually it'll be feeding just ever so slightly less than what your AAA battery pack was (if I'm understanding correctly).  You'd have to be careful if the saber wasn't a stunt, not because of danger of frying anything, but only because the lithium ions put out a higher voltage, so that saber would have been set up with a puck or resistor that'd be overkill for the lower voltage power bank.  Hope that helps- MTFBWY .

[Joshualee9871]

Awesome!! Thanks! I'm looking at ordering soon so I can get in the raffle. And I know the initiate sabers are the same width but I was just wondering if there's enough room length-wise in them for these battery packs. $10 per battery for 4-5 hours of use per saber is a steal haha.


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[Karmack]

I love the idea behind this, though I am afraid it might be beyond my meager skills at smithing...

Best part is you can charge up 2 or 3 of these bad boys and carry them around.  Run out of juice, pop it out and pop in another.  :-)

[phantompencil]

I'm looking at another brand battery pack that has a 5400 mAh with an output of 5V / 2.1 A

I'm not very savvy with electrical numbers.  Do I need to worry about the amperage output?  Or is the voltage what matters?

[Rathayatra]

thanks ---  i am a novice, but want to remember this post for future builds ---

[Kraxtor]

Great idea!  I'm going to try this with my stunt dark initiate!

[Master Medwyn]

Fantastic idea Nihilus, now there's a great advancement if by any chance the standard battery pack breaks. I'll definitely try this setup on my Prophecy!
Thank you for sharing!

[Kouri]

I'm looking at another brand battery pack that has a 5400 mAh with an output of 5V / 2.1 A

I'm not very savvy with electrical numbers.  Do I need to worry about the amperage output?  Or is the voltage what matters?

Amperage is just the maximum the pack's able to put out. If your LED's only asking for 1A, the pack'll only put out the 1A. Just worry about the 5v for your resistor/driver calculations.

That said, keep an eye on reviews, since lots of off-brands like to fluff up their mAh ratings.

[RevanReborn]

Aweome, thanks for clearing that up Kouri! Point awarded.

[Dragon Two]

Sorry to revive an older thread, but (1) do these packs have a constant output?  I read that the type I'm interested in uses 'Panasonic' batteries, so (2) what does that mean? 
(They're Li-ions.)  The type I'm interested it has LED status lights, so I'm looking to drill a square window in the hilt about 1" x 1" so I can see them.  (3) What size bit should I use?  Again, sorry for reviving an older thread, and for my very scattered questions.