The camera flatters it somewhat as always. The difference isn't so dramatic in person but it is plenty bright enough as you'd expect what with it having 156 ultrabright 50 degree LEDs in it. I'm actually most pleased by the evenness.
Yes i'm using a Hyperdyne driver and soundboard that I picked up cheap here on the forums.
The string itself isn't much different in construction to the regular config as described by eastern57. I just wired the LEDs in series pairs rather than individually. I though it would be a better solution than using two separate strings given i needed 7.4v to run the soundcard.
I'm not sure how these things are usually resistored but as i didn't want the added bulk on the string itself I just resistored each segment rather than each LED pair.
One thing i do like about the Hyperdyne driver is that while you can set the brightness settings for standard operation (mine is on level 5 in the vid,) on clash it gives the blade a full burst of juice. That means you can be a bit cheeky, resistor a little lower and overdrive the LEDs momentarily for the flash.
I suppose it's pretty crude but it works. That said, i'm not sure it's the best way to go. It's still pretty power hungry and i'm still a little unsure of it's durabilty. I already broke it once during stress testing, that's why it's now reinforced with some copper winding wire ...I'd like to try Wilsons method of topping/coning the LEDs for maximum light dispersion that Sloth used on his recent epic.
I've done brute force next it's time to try getting more from less
