Electronics Help

[AC5FF]

Just trying to understand the guts of my Saber here.
https://ws.onehub.com/files/kwovi3eh  This is a photo more or less of the top board in the saber..  I am assuming this is the obsidian sound board?

https://ws.onehub.com/files/9fkcowxd This is a photo of the other side of the battery pack.  It is labeled with Emerald Driver.  

https://ws.onehub.com/files/p1yutckd  This photo shows a side view.  There are two mini USB jacks here.   You can also see two additional boards sandwiched in between the two.

Can anyone explain what all I am looking at?   When plugging a USB in do I use the top larger board or the bottom?  I'm assuming it is the top board.  But if that is the case, what is the other one for?

TIA

[Therion Jinn]

Okay, what it looks like you have here is an Obsidian sound board with an Emerald controller.
As to which USB you use, that depends on what you're trying to work with. Each board has its own port for working with the software
To change the sound setups, you plug into the Obsidian board
To change the color setups, you plug into the Emerald board

[chalion]

There's 4 tiers of UltraSabers sound equipped lightsabers that you can buy:

1) Obsidian lite

2) Obsidian v3

3) Obsidian v4

4) Diamond controller

Explanation. Obsidian lite is the most basic sound board sold by US. It uses 4-AAA batteries and the sound fonts cannot be altered, also the sound cannot be muted or volume reduced.(NO usb connection).
Obsidian v3 & v4 are the next step(s) up. They both are powered by li-ion 2-AA style batteries. They allow volume control/muting and can change sound banks with the switch use. Both the v3 & v4 can access the US launcher to allow sound font customization and alteration. Note: These only allow sound modification. Nothing about the LED. The last board, the Diamond Controller, allows everything the above sound boards can do, plus, Diamond also allows gesture recognition, more sound banks to add addition fonts, volume control on the fly, LED pulse mode, flash on clash, lockup, PLUS, LED color switching.

All that aside, the Emerald driver is a hybrid controller. It only controls the LED (and accent lights, if installed).  You can purchase the Emerald controller, with or without sound, either the Obsidian v3 or v4 boards. Since it only controls the LED(s), if you have sound (in your case, it looks like a v3? board), both the Emerald and Obsidian can be accessed by their specific usb connections. The Emerald board can do any LED option that the Diamond can do. The Advantage of Diamond, is that it's all contained in one board..............and is now very easy to use/adapt.

Last note. That sound board should not be loose like that. There should have been some double sided sticky tape to hold it to the battery holder. If that usb connector would make contact to the inside of the hilt while in operation, it may cause a short and shut the lightsaber accidentally. The wires that attach both boards look to have lost some of the electrical tape covering too. You may want to make a couple fixes there.

[AC5FF]

Last note. That sound board should not be loose like that. There should have been some double sided sticky tape to hold it to the battery holder. If that usb connector would make contact to the inside of the hilt while in operation, it may cause a short and shut the lightsaber accidentally. The wires that attach both boards look to have lost some of the electrical tape covering too. You may want to make a couple fixes there.

I can feel the sticky tape that would attach the board to the battery holder, but i can't recall it ever being attached...   
Initially thought this might be why my saber isn't working...   but i have tried to power it with the battery pack out of the hilt as shown and I still have problems.

Ordered a 4th set of batteries from US last week....  Still waiting on them to ship!    Hope I can get them soon!   Would like to figure out this issue once and for all...

[AC5FF]

Got my Saber Working!!!

Two points I would like to bring up for those having some issues.   
Check out this photo:  https://ws.onehub.com/files/kwovi3eh

First of all I was getting power, because I would get a flash of light and a power up/off sound effect.   But that was all.   After swapping batteries a few times I ended up breaking the red wire to the sound board (zoom into the photo and you can see that).  Once that wire broke the saber would not do anything - completely dead.  (understandable)

Well, I pulled off all of the tape to clean things up and found an inductor on one of the two smaller boards damaged.  Luckily for me I work with an electronics manufacturing company and was able to repair the inductor.  Sorry, I didn't get a photo of it!  At any rate, after getting that taken care of and the wire repaired it was ready to test.

Now here is the wierd part....  The guy I had helping me repair wiring (I can't see well enough anymore) decided for himself he would try it out.  That's just a standard "AA" battery holder in there.  So, he threw two standard off the shelf AA batteries in and hit the power switch.   Darn thing powered on and worked!  WTF?!?  True, the LED was dim and the sound volume was lower, but it fully worked!  I was shocked!

At any rate; just a word of advise - if you are replacing the batteries a lot keep an eye on your wiring!   

[chalion]

The Obsidian sound card has a buffer protection circuit in it to protect from overpower, but the standard AA's should not have worked. Off the shelf, so maybe those were semi- worn down and that could be why they worked. The LED should not have lit, but the sound would have worked. I would definitely not keep those AA's in it and only use the 14500 AA Li-ion batteries that it is made for.

Glad you were able to get the problem figured out.

[AC5FF]

what is the chance I could get a schematic for the boards?   Not the sound board, but the two small ones right off of the battery pack.
I would like to replace the bad Inductor at some point, but want to be sure i get the correct value.   Probably have 1000s of them at the office.

[chalion]

what is the chance I could get a schematic for the boards?   Not the sound board, but the two small ones right off of the battery pack.
I would like to replace the bad Inductor at some point, but want to be sure i get the correct value.   Probably have 1000s of them at the office.

I've not yet seen a schematic for the Emerald board. I think those are proprietary to the people who make them (US doesn't make the boards, they have someone else under license make them).