Hi all - I’m using my 89sabers proffie v2.2 graflex for a biweekly choreography group and am running into a very replicable problem: after 5-10 minutes of exchanging blows, my saber locks up. Either the light goes out completely, or it simply freezes (obvious because I have a rotoscope flicker effect when it’s working ok). I can successfully restart it by removing and reinstalling the battery, which is freshly charged, but this is far from ideal in the middle of a routine. 5-10 minutes later, the same thing happens. I suspect it’s related to the shock of exchanging blows since it doesn’t happen just swinging it around.
Is this a known issue? Is there a fix short of opening it up and pulling the battery out each time?
Hi there! I had something similar and it turned out to be the battery. Mine was heat damage from leaving the saber in a very hot car, and I can’t say that’s what’s going on with yours, but the symptoms line up exactly. Freshly charged doesn’t rule it out either (mine was fully charged and even subsequent charging didn’t fix it). A tired cell can read full and still sag hard the moment something asks for real current, and a clash could do it. If you have another battery, I’d try that before going down the path of checking other wiring to the board.
If you could make it happen while you have Serial Monitor open to capture the last few messages before the freeze, it would be helpful.
While you’re at it, adding these defines, uploading, and then watching Serial Monitor will add some extra clues possibly:
I still have the damaged cell and it is fully charged, so I ran my tests again just now to be sure. I held the saber, clashed it repeatedly until it shut off, with nothing reviving it until I removed and reinserted the battery. Then I dropped in a different cell, same routine, no problems. For completeness, I then put the bad one back and it failed again. Every time.
Mine dropped out completely rather than freezing, but I would not rule the battery out on that. The LEDs will keep glowing on a rail that has already sagged too far for the processor, so a shallower dip can leave the blade lit and stuck on its last frame while a deeper one takes the whole thing down. Same cause, different depth. If you have a spare, that is worth trying before anything else, and A/B testing is the important part to ensure you have validated the fix. My damaged cell charges to full but still sags under clash current, so a voltage check will not clear it. It is likely added resistance in the battery’s internal circuitry.
If your issue still happens with a fresh battery then going down the serial capture explained by @NoSloppy is definitely the right move. Good to watch whether the port drops and the board re-enumerates, or whether it stays connected and the board just stops responding. The second one means the loop hung rather than lost power, and that is where the debug log should have something to say. But if it’s the battery, it’s a quick and easy fix…
Thanks to both of you! My batteries are two years old and have been charged for many cycles, so I should replace them anyway. I’ll order new ones now, as that’s a very easy fix to try first, and this diagnosis is consistent with the fact that the problem has gotten much worse in the last few months. Thank you nosloppy too … I’ll turn immediately to your suggestion if the battery fix doesn’t do the trick.
Generally speaking, the problem is either springs or a bad soldering somewhere.
By springs, I mean pogo pins, battery holders or sd card contacts. Any of these could temporarily loose contact during an impact, which could then cause problems. In the case of pogo pins, the problem should be temporary, unless the power spike causes secondary problems.
SD card contacts are generally pretty good, but even a small disconnect will generally cause a squee-of-death sort of freeze. (Both sound and lights freeze.)
Battery contacts are also springs. Impacts can disconnect the battery for very short times. Sometimes cleaning and bending the contacts helps. Capacitors connected in series with the battery could also help. Small glitches in power can have fairly random effects, so I would expect the behavior to be somewhat random if this is the problem.
The fact that it happens after a few minutes might be a clue. Maybe something heats up? Or maybe the battery is partially depleted? Or maybe the battery is just old and bad and runs out after 10 minutes?
I think the battery can be a bigger problem, especially with the actual spring based negative contacts. The battery is pretty heavy so would shift up and down while swinging. I guess putting the negative blade side might help a bit?