Ethan's Saber :)

[Taegin Roan]

Well, good luck. It certainly looks sort of difficult. But from what I've seen of you, I'm pretty sure you will be successful.

[RevanReborn]

Haha, thanks for the votes of confidence and kind words guys!  There were some tense moments... and believe me lol, NOBODY's gonna feel inadequate looking at these solder joins haha!  But incident free (it seems, won't know till test lol). 

So before I threw the fine tip on I had to get the green die- that's a broader tip all the way... and a friggn blow torch woulda probably helped too lol!  Like I said, haha, feast your eyes on these babies haha!  Ugliest joins ever!  You don't wanna see them clumpy like this, I'll redo- but for the test it's ok.

Bet u can't guess which ones I did?!  Bwahahaha!  Yikes. 

they wouldn't break off for the life of me, so I'll leave on to test- def getting redone though lol.  Work anyways lol.


Ya that was tight lol- dirty tight.  Needless to say, I'm never touching those again lol.  I'll take the ends off the led and just use new lengths of wire for those- I'd have to splice that way for the install anyways.

There- that should make it a little easier to get the green blade Ethan's looking for haha!  Doh!  So where were we?  Ah yes, basically right where I thought I'd be to start this morning lol , so I'm thinking tomorrow's d day for hooking up/ testing after this hiccup.  For real this time haha, cause now I really AM where I thought I left off last time I said that lol. 


So now we're left with all the basic connections you'd have coming off your saber when you unpacked internals more or less, just my battery pack and speaker are cut off where yours likely wouldn't be.  From this point forward that means you could consider this section like a mini tutorial on how to set up a 3 stage indicator like this in your US with obsidian.

And it's a cake walk from here- just a matter of hooking these parts together a certain way .
 
Keep u posted! 

[Taegin Roan]

If I had those skizzles, I would never do anything except build sabers. Great job, and they don't look that bad. Much better than mine would.

Point to you

[Ginsu117]

This is how I feel looking at all that circuitry...

[Jediseth]

This is how I feel looking at all that circuitry...

Lol ha ,ha I feel like that all the time. Looking good Rev!

[RevanReborn]

Thanks guys

Haha, Ginsu I swear you the have the best timing ever man!  I'm right there with y'all too today lol. 

First tho- where we left off everything was all good to go/ prepped except for port:

Trim/tin legs

Then hook on a single piece of thicker wire for each leg, which multiple splices will get joined to- you can solder those spots where many wires are twisted together directly to the legs, but a lot of times it's better to do this if you have the space I think.  Shrink each lead mostly to control bending and then a piece over it all for insulation.


SC/ lightning bolt marks the switched negative post (board, green 5mm die, switch led), directly opposite that is the positive centre pin post (battery, board, switch led, 5mm), and the remaining post is just the negative to battery. 

Starting to connect all these pieces/ internals - the port is kind of the key stone in that regard.  Here the positives are grouped ready to go to port.

And now's a good time to slap the resistors on the 5mm dice negatives.
Stand by colour (green) goes to battery/ port, second stage colour goes to speaker negative (red, for a yellow when mixed with the green), and flash colour goes to foc pin. 


 So there we have it- Ethan's internals, roughed out for test and configuration etc...

Everything looks good- BUT I don't seem to be able to use the green channel lol.  Tried reseting the board in the launcher etc, but the dang thing doesn't wanna give up that 4th channel lol.  The soldering/ wiring is good, been tested separately- no clue. 

Almost like I need to physically do something more to the board to get that channel active?  Or maybe I just need to solder to top after all?  Bit of a bummer but eveything esle about the test checks out- I have another emerald I can use, so we're good there as well .  Just a son of a gun burning the last couple days, I'll have to suck it up and do this again on the other emerald.  Hoping I'll have that ready by Friday.

Sorry lol, I'm SUPER tired!  This vid will explain better . 

https://youtu.be/UgK7r09Sa9Y

If anyone has any ideas about what would get that channel active I'd be super grateful lol!  Not the end of the world though. 

[Taegin Roan]

That is a lot of wires. Glad it's you dealing with them and not me. Sorry to hear about the LED not working properly, I hope you get it fixed.

Point to you

[Ginsu117]

Im guessing its noth8ng as simple as wiring the green channel and dedicating it to the AV Switch, sometimes I have to step back from a project or get fresh eyes because its usually the simple things that get us because we overlook them due to soending too much time in the details

[RevanReborn]

Thanks everyone

D7 it's great to hear from you!  Thanks!  We'll get it, one way or the other, even if i just end up redoing this on another emerald, so nothing to worry about .  Actually if I go that route, the added bonus is that other emerald is attached to a v4 obsidian, so it would upgrade the sound as well... thinking that might be the best way to go actually now that I'm realizing this lol.  But the only thing is, that will require a bit of a sacrifice to the saber gods lol, so before I go and do anything drastic I think I'll take a break for a day, just kinda do some odds and ends for this when I get home from work in morning, and get to bed early- that will give me a day to think and a fresher mind, and then at that point if I can't figure it out I'll just commence the mk 2 lol. 

Hope things are awesome!! 

Keep u posted.

[Kouri]

Few things come to mind.

1) Are you soldering to the opposite side of the board compared to the other LED wires? There's no guarantee the traces cross over to both sides, so you might very well need to de-solder and resolder to the other side of the board. (Also, some of those LED solder joints look cold. Make sure you're getting your iron nice and hot before working. A very hot iron that only has to touch the components for half a second has a much lower chance of causing damage than a cooler iron that has to sit for a while to melt solder).

2) It might be something as simple as having the + and - wires on there backward.

3) Assuming you can't get the fourth channel operational, you only really need Red, Green, and Royal Blue for full-range color mixing, so you could replace the white with green. A nice silvery White FoC can be accomplished wtith ~60% red, 85% Green, and 100% Blue on most LEDs, and the slight white pulse can be achieves by just bumping up whatever sliders aren't currently used in the color.

[RevanReborn]

Haha, I guess I didn't try new batteries, no!  

I think the LED itself is good- I've tested it through the wiring it's got now and fires up green no prob.  It could be somehting as simple as I need to solder the green channel on the top with all the other channels, but I doubt it- the pads on the underside clearly look to be one and the same/ interchangeable.  

Actually, I don't think there's anything wrong  with the emerald at all either- it kinda makes sense- this was in the Scorpion- it was a 1st prize which was billed as a 2 channel emerald... but they had just stopped doing the 2 channels at that time.  When I saw it had more than the 2 hooked up I assumed it was 4- but it was actually a 3 channel.  So def not complaining, my prize came with a bonus channel .  But what I'm getting at is i bet physically this emerald was set up for these channels when it was put together- and the green channel wasn't prepared to be used.  Like I think it was simply built to be this way- the last channel must not have been hooked up/ prepped in construction, if you know what I mean? who knows?  Maybe I could take it apart and change this.

But even the three channels is cool- I'll just keep this one and give Ethan the 4 channel- then likely what I'll do is take the white channel off the white for this one and slap it on the green, which will leave me with a fully adjustable rgb saber and all the extra perks of the emerald too.  The rgb can still do pretty much any colour- i'd just have to remember that white is green in the emerald software, and use the white slider tab for green.  No biggie for me.  

Thanks D .  No need to worry!  I'm just gonna do some easy/ loose end type stuff today and hang with arlo a bit cause i haven't been giving him enough attention lately- I'll crash early for once and get this redone tomorrow in one shot I bet.  I'm off work this weekend.  

Keep u posted.

[RevanReborn]

Hey Kouri

Thanks man!  Yup those green die joints look like cold barf lol- def getting redone anyway, like I was saying earlier they just drive me nuts being so bad lol- but surprisingly they won't break off for anything and when you power the other side of the wires the green fires no prob. Think the prob was if u see earlier in the thread I somehow didn't notice the green die wasn't wired before haha,  so the mcpcb was all done up to the sink with a couple thermal stars and eveything- it was nearly unsolderable lol!  I was all cocky cause I got this new iron and i had it set way high, but dang those pads didn't wanna get hot.  I should get one of those big 'ol hoof tips.

I'll try the top side of the board for sure before I throw in the towel.  That's where all the other channels are hooked... pretty tight soldering that tho lol, that's why it was last resort. 

Haha now I'm def gonna check those leads before bed today just in case lol- wouldn't that be hilarious if were just backwards lol? 

Appreciate the help . 

[RevanReborn]

Hey everybody-

Laid down for a nap yesterday afternoon before I got to redoing the internals and I woke up this morning lol.  I'm just doing laundry ATM, ugh, so figured at least this would be a good time to get these up- some stuff I was picking away at the same time I was wiring everything up the first time.

Finished blade plug:








Here u can see the brass plugs I cut for the emitter shroud- they look really nice, tie the plug and inlays together- I like the way they sit in a tripod config with the plug.  Little details like this just get your mind/ imagination wheeling, it's like you just get drawn in by them, they catch your eye and you're just like 'ooo those look cool, I wonder what they are/ what they do etc?', it's like a certain depth to the look/ imaginary futuristic tech/ engineering. 







I've got a small mountain of laundry to process here lol, put away etc- then I gotta take arlo to the park and then get my haircut before they close cause I'm starting to look all grizzly Adams over here lol, but I'm back on it after all that crap- keep u posted .

[Rapine]

Awesomesauce Rev.

That does look cool.  Nice touch indeed. 

Ahhh - chores.  Never-ending chores...

-1

[Taegin Roan]

Very cool Rev. I really like that plug. I may even consider modifying a blade plug myself sometime. Point to you

And one for you too D7, that is a really cool....time thingy?