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Author Topic: Homebrew Hyperblade style blade  (Read 5178 times)

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Offline Subvirtua

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Homebrew Hyperblade style blade
« on: December 28, 2011, 01:21:46 PM »
So, seeing as I found my phone  ;D and it's a bit slow on the forums I thought i'd post a few pics of my initial tests. It' very early days. I only have one strip running, direct driven at 7.5V and despite my binning there is at least one pair of leds that aren't quite playin ball.
I know the workmanship isn't exactly pretty but this is the first time i've ever actually built anything that wasn't entirely constructed out of Lego  :D.
Now the Xmas madness is over I'll start addressing the issues with the test strip and plough on with the other six...

Twin strip in ParaserielellotronicumTM  ;)


Fired up.


This better shows the unevenness.
 

Strip squeezed into split MR foam.  Very unscientific comparison with Yoda MR.


Think that's right. Never used photobucket either... All comments, advice and or ridicule gratefully received.

Hmm ok that wasn't right. No pics just links.

« Last Edit: July 11, 2012, 03:43:49 PM by Subvirtua »

Offline QUI-GON JINN

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Re: Homebrew Hyperblade style blade initial test.
« Reply #1 on: December 28, 2011, 01:54:15 PM »
Fixed picture links.  ;)  Looks okay so far,  but since these types of blades aren't my specialty,  I have no advice for you on how best to even the brightness out between the led's.


Offline Subvirtua

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Re: Homebrew Hyperblade style blade initial test.
« Reply #2 on: December 30, 2011, 04:22:15 PM »
Ok then. Led's rebinned and construction a little tidier resulted in second string lighting more evenly. Fired it up from the Hyperdyne driver for the first time today and it looks pretty good. Information from Jim about segment to color sequence was a bit vague. It appears that it is not standard across all boards. My common positive is blue for instance as opposed to yellow as reported by someone in a previous thread. Trial and error it is then....
Oh and thanks Qui gon for sorting out the pics.
« Last Edit: December 30, 2011, 04:24:14 PM by Subvirtua »

Offline EXAR KUN

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Re: Homebrew Hyperblade style blade initial test.
« Reply #3 on: January 03, 2012, 11:31:11 AM »
Getting the foam right really helps.

If you don't like something about the way yours looks, try different foam or tape it up differently.



Offline Subvirtua

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Re: Homebrew Hyperblade style blade initial test.
« Reply #4 on: January 07, 2012, 08:31:47 AM »
My only foam option is the MR foam atm but the twin strips are too wide to fit into one so i'll had to join two together. All the segments I've done look fine now it must just have been iffy construction on the first one. Right now though I have a bigger problem. I tried to fire it up the night before last to test the rest of the segments and my SaberSD is toast.  :(. All I did was switch over from my old speaker to the new 2w bass. No onboard soldering just the flying leads and now all i'm getting is a strange static hum. It's not the speaker as I tried the old one again to no avail. It's a major setback after all the time i've spent building the string. All I can do now is try and get some more cash together to send it stateside and hope Jim can repair it.

Edit. Now I think about it there is a possibility that the board came into contact with the metal of the hilt although it would have been isolated from the supply when this occurred. Is it possible that there would be enough residual current in the board, (say in a capacitor or something,) to fry something?
« Last Edit: January 08, 2012, 02:35:07 AM by Subvirtua »

Offline Subvirtua

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Re: Homebrew Hyperblade style blade initial test.
« Reply #5 on: July 10, 2012, 02:51:01 PM »
So, as I finally got around to wrapping up my string I thought i'd celebrate by posting some dodgy cellphone pictures of it in action...,

Quick shot of my very technical construction methods...



String pre wrap.



Quick clip of it running next to my padawans yoda that I still haven't gotten around to fixing..., rubbish dad I am  ;)

http://s1166.photobucket.com/albums/q604/subvirtua/?action=view&current=VE_20120710_101549.mp4

And finally, as it seems to be all the rage these days, a couple of pics of the reason I started all of this in the first place.  :D





Yes, he is a boy... I get that a lot.

Offline scottjua

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Re: Homebrew Hyperblade style blade initial test.
« Reply #6 on: July 10, 2012, 04:04:36 PM »
WHOA! Nice!

Are you using the saber SD board and their balde driver???

In the video the camera compensates for the brightness so much it looks like the Yoda is OFF!

COOL!

Post more on what needs to be done to do this please... I will give it a shot myself soon.

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Offline Subvirtua

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Re: Homebrew Hyperblade style blade initial test.
« Reply #7 on: July 11, 2012, 03:42:49 PM »
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  ;)

Offline Gil Gamesh

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Re: Homebrew Hyperblade style blade
« Reply #8 on: July 13, 2012, 09:05:38 PM »
dude, nice job!  You can definitely see some slight..."gaps" or so during the pulsing but most impressive!  I attempted an led strip once, got fed up with it and gave up so from my point of view, well done!  :D 

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