I managed to finish this one up over the weekend...here's what I did....
I installed the battery pack, and started installation of the board:
These are the RICE port leads:
Obviously, for the PC 1.6 to operate fully, I'll need to add an aux button. I This one has plenty of room in the ribbed extension between the board and the led heat sink for the switch, so I'll install it using a pvc c-clip:
To make the clip, I'll use a 1/2" wide ring cut off from a 1 1/4" pvc sink drain tailpiece extension.
It will need to be cut down enough to fit inside the smaller i.d. of the ribbed extension:
Next, it needs to be drilled and tapped for the switch threads:
I marked it with a black marker where I wanted the switch, then drilled the hole:
Then using an old, damaged switch for a tap (tap's for these metric threads are fairly expensive, and this will work if you don't have one), I "tapped" the hole:
Then installed the actual switch:
This is obviously not the best way to do this, but it'll get the job done. you will basically be force fitting the switch into the hole in the pvc clip.
Now to check it for fit:
That'll work just fine.
Now to solder the leads to the switch:
To install it in the ribbed extesnion, you need to make sure the wires are long enough for the clip to reach through the extension and leave the clip in the female threads so the extension will spin freely around the clip. this prevents any damage to the wires from twisting. The wires will simply coil up on their own when the clip is pushed in and snaps into place.
The extension can be threaded into the bottom of the hilt now:
And the switch slid into position:
The leads for the led's are just long enough to reach out of the ribbed extension, and fit around the switch just fine:
It might still be possible to access the SD card, but it really won't be necessary with this particular saber...Jolly is not one to change sound fonts on his sabers, and if it needs settings changed, he can use the RICE port.
Now to hook up the RICE port:
I color coded the wires to match the diagram in the PC manual, just to make it easier to remember what wire was what.
Made the connections:
I heat shrunk all three terminals, then the entire port. This will not reach the pommel grill, so it'll be free floating inside the pommel. It has enough tension on the wires not to rattle, so it'll work and will keep the port hidden.
Now for the really fun part....wiring up the new main blade led, and Rb-R-W Tri-Rebel:
I started by adding a jumper between the Royal blue and Red positive pads. This will need to be wired in parallel, even though there will be some color separation. The battery pack is set up for 3.7v, so a series connection is out of the question. This is fine with the owner as this saber is a trooping saber, and run time is more important than color separation at start up and shut down.
The next step was adding the negative leds to the Rb and R pads:
I then mounted the led to the heat sink using a thermal adhesive pad:
I also added the leads for the white FoC led as well.
To get the correct shade of violet/purple in this set up, a resistor needs to be added to the red, since I tried it straight without one, and got a hot pink.....I don't think Jolly wants hot pink, so I tried out a few resistors on the red:
I believe this one was a 10 ohm, 1 watt. It was too pink in person...the camera didn't pick it up correctly. It didn't have quite enough red, and looked more blue than the camera showed.
Then I tried a few more (one of these days I need to remember to pick up a potentiometer for this...keep forgetting when I order electronics components to add one to the cart)
5.7 ohm, 1 watt....got closer to the shade I was looking for, but not quite there. Needed more red.
This was a 3.3ohm, 1 watt resistor:
That's the shade of violet I was looking for, so I went with that one.
Here's the finished led soldered, heat shrunk, and ready to go:
The lens is secured to the star with hot glue....I forgot about Jango's suggestion by the time I did this, and used the glue gun out of habit. Oh, well, I'll try the bits of the adhesive pad next time.
The final color:
The color is fairly even in person, but the camera makes it look better than it is, since the tip of the blade fades a bit to a pink-ish purple color near the tip. This is probably due to design of the lenses for this particular led. It is still much brighter than the DX RGB that was in this before, though, so I think he'll be happy with it.
I tried to get a shot of the FoC, but all I got was this:
I need to alter the parameters for that for it to show up better in a picture, but the blade does indeed turn white during a clash and blade lock up. I'll try to get a video made after I adjust the settings a bit with RICE.
