LED issues

[mistermuffin]

Hey guys,

I'm working on building my first saber and I'm having some problems with the wiring. Originally I had wired up my saber following an incorrect diagram. When I wired it up I had the Vin - of my buckpuck spliced with my battery - and the ground. I also had the LED from my obsidian soundboard wired to my LED -. With this set up, when I put my batteries in the LED would flash its color, but that was it. Removing and replacing the batteries would cause it to flash again, but obviously that wasn't correct.

I've now got it wired following this diagram:



So my battery - is spliced with the ground and that is connected to my switch. The LED from the soundboard is now wired with my vin -. The LED module = and - from this LED: https://www.ultrasabers.com/product-p/led%20module.htm are wired directly to the = and - LED from my buckpuck. Now when I place the batteries in I don't get a light at all. I'm not sure what could be wrong. The only thing I can think of right now is maybe the obsidian is set to not show a color right now? I'm using windows 10 and so far I haven't been able to get my machine to even recognize that the soundboard is plugged in. I've heard some people have better luck with USB 2.0 plugs, but no luck with that so far. Might be worth noting that my switch is not currently hooked up. I removed my wiring from the hilt to see if one of my connections got messed up and I had to remove the switch connection to do so. Not sure if the switch is necessary for testing, I kinda thought touching the ground to the button wire would be good enough to complete the circuit and test the LED.

Does anyone have an idea what might be going wrong? The new diagram I'm following makes much more sense to me than the first one, but maybe something's still wrong.. I'd appreciate any help!

Thanks!

[scifidude79]

Hi there, welcome to the forum.  For starters, the Obsidian doesn't control LED colors at all, you need an Emerald or Diamond board for that.  With the Obsidian, when it's on, it's on.  The only thing in the LED that will ever be off is the flash on clash.

I don't know exactly what setup you have, if you're trying to do FOC or if you're trying to do a lit AV switch, but this is the correct (basic) wiring for Obisidian:

https://www.ultrasabers.com/v/PICTURES/Z-Sound-ObsidianUSB2.1/obsidian2wiringdiagram2.jpg

(ignore where it says "V2," the wiring has not changed)

The buck puck should be between the battery and LED.  It is designed to act as a resistor and stop the battery from frying your LED, because the 7.4v power source is too much for the LED. The buck puck vin+, vin+ from the board, and battery positive should all be soldered together in a neat little bundle.  The vin- from the buck puck goes to the LED connector on the board.  Coming from the buck puck, the LED+ and LED- both go to the correct pads on your LED.  If you have Flash on Clash, its positive also gets spliced into the LED+ coming from the buck puck, the FOC- pad goes directly to the FOC connection on the Obsidian board, DO NOT connect it to the buck puck.

That's what I have.  I don't know what you've got, some pictures would help.  I just hope you didn't fry your LED with the incorrect wiring before.  If you did, that would be why it's not turning on now.  But, that may not be it.

[mistermuffin]

Hey scifidude thanks for reaching out!

I'm pretty sure I've done exactly what you wrote below, but I've taken some pictures of what I've got and maybe we can see for sure.

http://s347.photobucket.com/user/mistermuffinkm/library/Ultrasaber

The wires quickly became a cluttered mess lol, but I hope those help. If not I'll see what if I can take some that are more clear. Like I mentioned before I've got the switch disconnected right now, and I don't have the FoC wire connected to anything. I don't plan on setting that up on this first saber.

[scifidude79]

Well, it looks OK from what I can tell.  Though, it's hard to tell exactly what is what there.

Have you tested your LED to make sure it wasn't damaged by the incorrect wiring?  I don't know what color it is, but if it's blue, green or white you can test it with just 1 battery.  Take your single cell (14500) and attach the LED wires to it, positive to positive and negative to negative.  If it's working, it will light up.  Don't look directly at the LED.  If it's red, you need a resistor because 3.7v is too much for red.

That's what I would do next, just to make sure the LED didn't get fried or anything.

[mistermuffin]

That's a good tip. Looks like my LED is not the problem though, worked fine when I connected it to the battery. I have a green LED btw.

So I know the issue is somewhere in the rest of my setup. I've checked the wiring diagram over several times now and I'm confident I've wired it up correctly. I guess it could be my solder joints, I haven't soldered anything before this, but they look pretty good to me. No frayed ends or anything.

[mistermuffin]

Hey, sorry about the long response time.. I got stuck in hurricane Harvey, and when I got back I did some tinkering on my setup and..I don't wanna talk about it, but I had to order some new parts. Lol. So I think I've found out my issue, but maybe someone can confirm. I'm thinking I accidentally wired my stuff up in reverse. If I set my soundboard on my desk with the nonblack side facing the ceiling and the pins facing left, I have my speaker wired to the pins which are farthest away from me. So I think I got it mixed up. The speaker wires should be connected to the pins closest to me right? So starting from the pin closest to me I should have, spk+, spk-, btn, foc, led, vin, and gnd right?

I'm gonna feel dumb if that's the case, but glad to move on if it is Thanks for the help so far!

[mistermuffin]

I set out to rewire my saber using the pin configuration I listed above, and I got it to work. Last night I was able to turn the saber on, had sound, and the LED was working. All was well, except I realized I forgot the heat shrink around my last connection, which was the connections at the momentary switch. Because of that, I noticed that whenever those connections bumped my metal hilt, it would power down the saber. So I removed the connection, put on some heat shrink, and rewired it this morning.

I was hoping that would be the end of the story, but no. With all connections set up now, the same way I had them when it was working for me, I can't get the LED to light up anymore. When I put the batteries in, I hear a sound (couldn't tell you if it was a start up or shut down sound), but then nothing. I had heard of the soundboard doing this when it was trying to protect itself from a short circuit, but I'm not sure that's the case here.

I have now:
1) Tried removing the switch and putting the batteries in. Same thing happens as above, I get the one sound, but nothing else. I can repeat this behavior any time I put the batteries back in.
2) Tried removing the LED and testing it with a single battery (tested both batteries to ensure they were both gtg). LED lit up that beautiful green, and things seemed to work.
3) With the switch and the LED removed, I placed the batteries back into the pack and I still get that one sound.
4) Made sure the batteries were at full charge. Charger says they're good to go, and I can't imagine there's an issue with the batteries themselves as they powered the LED no problem.

Can anyone confirm what causes the soundboard to make this sound? If it's a circuit issue, maybe I had a really bad solder connection with the switch, and idk, maybe that could explain why I still hear the noise when the LED and switch are completely removed..

[Racona Nova]

I can't tell exactly what it is, but it could have something to do with the board. Can you listen to it again and figure out which sound it is? If it's a power down, then you might have a shorty somewhere. If it's the boot sound, then you might have a loose connection. If it's the power up...then I have no idea what the cause is.

[mistermuffin]

It's definitely not the power up sound. I think it's power down, but as I look on youtube I see different power down sounds for different sabers.

I've gone through and re-checked my soldering on the switch connections and the LED connections and I'm pretty sure those are fine. The only other thing I can think of is maybe my switch is messed up? I haven't found a good way to test just the switch.

Another thought that occurred to me. Are all these wires interchangeable? What I mean is, I had another of the same soundboard and battery pack that no longer works, so I took the black wire from the battery pack, and the button wire from the sound board, and added the length to the wires I'm currently trying to use. Basically, I was having issues putting batteries in the pack without disconnecting the pins, so I added these lengths to help me slide the pack out. It shouldn't matter that I've reused these wires right? If nothing else works, I think I'll disassemble the whole thing again and start from scratch.

[Racona Nova]

I don't know how to test the switch either. Maybe using another Ultrasaber with sound, removing the electronics and then connect them to the switch in question...

I don't see why that should be a problem. You can use any wire of the same gauge (the only important thing when chaning wires).