I’m using Proffie 3.9 and I’ve been reading through the Shtok V4 manual. There are a couple things that I’m trying to figure out.
The first question I would like to ask is, does it matter which Data line I use, “data 1 or data 2” on the Neopixel connector, and does it matter which data line I send it to on the Proffie board?
For my most recent build I used the second Neopixel connector configuration to mirror my blade and the PCB LEDs. I wired data 2 on the Neopixel connector, to data 2 on the board. Long story short, the connector wouldn’t illuminate the blade, and the PCB LEDs wouldn’t work. I then switched it from data 2 to data 1 on the Proffie board, and it worked perfectly. I left the data wire on data 2 for the Neopixel connector. Can someone explain which data pads I should be using and why? Also is there any reason to use both data pads aside from controlling the PCB LEDs separately from the blade?
My second question is about Blade Detect. I want to use Blade Detect in my next build and I was wondering if I need a resistor, and is there anything that I will need to add to my config to get it to work?
It depends on how you want to wire it. The LEDs on the pogo pin board can either go in series, parallel or completely separate from the LEDs that are on the blade.
If you wire them in parallel, then it does not matter which data pad you use on the Neopixel connector. If you wire in serial, it matters, if you wire them separately, you’ll need to use both.
On the Proffieboard side, Data1 is recommended because it has an inline resistor that protects the boards from shorts and also helps prevent unwanted LED glow when the blade is supposed to be off. The other data pads will also work, but I would recommend an inline resistor if you use one of the other data pads. Note that if you use Data2, the configuration file for you board also needs to be configured to use Data2, or nothing will happen.
Blade ID works better with a direct connection to to the blade, and no additional pixels to interfere.
Blade detect does not need any resistors. You would need to add the BLADE_DETECT_PIN define to your config file. It does require another wire from the pogo pin PCB to the proffie though.
Blade ID also doesn’t require a resistor, but it often works better if you have a resitor between GND and + inside the blade that it can try to measure.
Note that it’s also possible to poll the blade ID and use that instead of blade detect. This requires a few more defines, but doesn’t require an additional wire.
I may be repeating what you already know, and this is documented in the Shtok manual, but do note that if you use both the data 1 and data 2 pads, thus wiring the emitter and blade independently, you need to remove the R1 resistor from the NPXL pcb. This is “Option 4.”
Based on your notes about how it worked, wiring data 2 on the NPXL pcb to data 1 on the proffie board, and everything lights, suggests that you are configuring the NPXL pcb to work in series. This is defined in the manual as “Option 2.”
Lastly, the wiring needs to match how the board was flashed. The blade definitions in the config control how the data pins on the proffieboard behave. If you wire data 2 and you did not flash your board, which was flashed to use data 1, nothing will light. The labels on the NPXL pcb only define where they go on the NPXL pcb and are independent of the pins on the board.
If you know all this, just ignore my comment–you didn’t mention any of it in your post, so I thought I should mention it.