Accent LED Battery Monitor Question?

[R5D4]

I'm new to lightsabers and have just bought a Prophecy v3. I've been working my way through the Diamond Controller and its user manual, and I notice that the illuminated switch is actually driven by the board as  Accent LED 1. The user manual says that the battery monitor feature can be applied to any Accent LED channel, which presumably means it can be applied to Accent LED 1, the main switch.

My question is, if I set the board to do this, what will happen? With the saber switched on, will the switch LED be UNLIT until a low battery makes it blink, or will it be LIT and then start blinking when the batteries get low? It would be great if it was the latter!

I'm a bit nervous about just trying it as the book says the configuration needs to be set BEFORE you wire the Accent LED so I'm wary of causing any damage. But it would be very useful, when altering fonts with a computer, to have a warning of low battery level before they die completely and potentially damage a data transfer between my saber and my Mac.

Thanks in advance.

[scifidude79]

For starters, I wouldn't recommend messing around with the wiring if you have any reservations. If you're uncertain and you're not sure if you can fix any damage you do, then don't do it. Messing around with your wiring will void your warranty. Then, if you can't fix the saber, Ultrasbers will charge you to fix it. Second, when you connect to the control program, the light and sound on the sabers turn off. So, I don't think it will drain much power while connected to the control program. But, I would still recommend having fully charged batteries before you connect to the computer.

As for what would happen if you used a switch LED for a PLI, I'm not sure. PLIs aren't within my area of expertise. But, I do know that PLIs usually have a series of LEDs that go down as the saber battery drains. I don't know if a single LED option is viable as a PLI. Someone with more experience with them will have to weigh in.

[Infinit01]

Hey there, R5. Agreeing with what SFD said, if you have no experience with lightsabers let alone some electrical and wiring background, it’s best to contact UltraSabers since DIY jobs will void the warranty.

My ideology is that if I don’t know how to do something, I’ll learn it but if I want something done right that instant, it’s better to spend a little money to get what’s needed than spend more for messing it up while learning. 

[R5D4]

Thanks for the comments.

Don't worry - I have no intention of diving in and altering any wiring. I think maybe my post wasn't clear, but my plans are strictly limited to settings in the Launcher software...

Accent LED-1 comes wired to the illuminated switch by default from the factory. You can prove it by adjusting it in the Font Wizard to make it blink or whatever. The default setting is obviously that it's simply on all the time the lightsaber is active.

But...

...according to the user guide, any Accent LED can be set as a battery level indicator, with 40 percent remaining battery capacity making it blink slowly and 20 percent remaining charge making it blink more quickly.

What I don't know is whether setting LED-1 (the illuminated switch) to battery monitor will switch it off completely until it starts blinking the battery level warning, or whether it will still be controlled by the Font Wizard setting until the battery level warning takes over.

I dare say I could just try it and see, but it's the bit in the user guide that says that Accent LED configurations should be set BEFORE the LED is wired up that's prompted my caution.

[Sound Man]

The answer to your question is "the switch LED be UNLIT until a low battery makes it blink", which, like you, I thought it would be the other way.

[Racona Nova]

^Exactly When you assign the battery monitor to the switch, all settings are overridden by the board's battery monitor function. Which means you have no control over the switch LED anymore.

[R5D4]

Thanks guys.
Eventually I did just try it and yes, you're spot on - you can set the accent LED to do what you like in the effect editor, but once you assign that accent to be a battery monitor, it all gets over-ridden. I've started making the switch the battery monitor at the start of any computer edit session and then switching it back when I'm done. That way I can be sure I won't risk the saber dying from flat batteries while I'm writing new stuff to the board.