Through Pixel Charging - Wiring Help

[NoSloppy]

Check around the site as there are several threads such as:

Let's talk about blade plug charging

OK, so picking up from another couple of threads, the Prof said this: Connecting power to the +/- of the power connector is fine, and it’s a perfectly reasonable way to charge the saber, as long as your charger doesn’t try to go over 5 volts. (Most stick to 4.2 volts, but some high-speed chargers might try higher voltages.) You can charge directly through a 3-pin pogo connector, the only caveat is that the blade has to be powered by the proffieboard, or it won’t work properly. This can be accomplished by using blade ID to make the board recognize the charging blade plug and have it use a special preset that is always on for charging. So between reading this and looking at the manual, I just want to check some details: Blade ID works by comparing resistance between data and blade ground. However, rather than build a custom blade with a suitable resistor for this to work, presumably you can use the Proffie scanid command to measure the resistance on a normal blade (which I guess should be zero), enter that as the relevant value in the config, then do the same with a simple charging plug with, say, a 20k/ohm resistor. As long as there is a difference between the two numbers, the Proffie will know which ‘blade’ is inserted. Have I got that right? Doing the above, as long as I’ve used data 1 for the main blade, I don’t need to make any wiring changes to the hilt to make this work - I just need to change the config and build the charging plug. Yes? With blade ID, I could have any number of normal blade presets for a normal blade, but just one charge preset for the charger plug, and blade ID will make the Proffie jump to the correct option. That way the charge preset can just be StylePtr< White >(), which will switch the fets on allowing the battery to charge. Is that correct? If the fets are on to enable charging, I could have a single pixel accent LED wired to another fet and data 2 set to &style_charging, and this would give me a charge level indicator on the hilt during charging. Again am I understanding this right? Thanks in advance for any thoughts. If the answers to all the above is yes, this is really exciting for me as it adds a load of flexibility to my designs and installs.

Feature request for special LED function

Hello everyone. I am looking for some help with a certain function i’d like implemented for the proffie v3. I was told it might be possible through a custom blade style but it might have to be placed into the OS somewhere. Basically, I would like an LED (blade) that behaves as a charging indicator. It would be hidden in the crystal chamber and only active when a USB is plugged into the board. Ideally it would be neopixel, but due to how the board works an RGB standard LED might be a must, and that is fine too. The LED would be off when nothing it plugged in, red when charging, and green when charged. Let me know if this is something you think you can implement and I won’t mind paying for your time. Thanks!

Bladeplug Charger. Version 1.0

Based on the discussions by @Sabersense and @profezzorn on this thread I decided to make a first version of the charging bladeplug. Apparently TCSS went with doing it in stand way. But my design requires just 1 3D printed piece, and the rest can be made with common blade parts. Caveats Let’s start with some basics: This only works with Plecter Labs/TCSS/ShtockCustomWorx-style NeoPixel connectors. The hilt has to have Battery + wired directly to the NPXL connector and the negative has to only have FETs between them. As such, we have validated this with Proffieboards but I don’t know about the other soundboards. In this implementation I used a particular but pretty popular TP4056 USB-C module for practicality reasons. You could use anything that charges a Lithium-Ion battery. But I can’t stress the need for protection circuits in general. Most lithium ion charging modules depend on current to know when the battery has top off. Thus, it is important to minimize consumption while charging. Since you need the Proffie to stay on, you want to have it detect the blade (I used a 39k resistor) and make a minimal preset with no sound that turn’s off every other blade and element. In my implementation, I chose a module that has OUT lines to feed the neopixel leds off the charger. I’ve tested one charger with one Proffie installed saber with a completely depleted battery, where the board wouldn’t even start up, and the charger worked. I can’t assure that it will work with every board, and may be a different manufacturer of the charging board might not work with a turned off soundboard. But the only test I did, worked. Now, to the particulars of my implementation. Blade Charger V1.0 [BM-ChargingBladePlug-01] I’ve designed it so you can use any piece of blade tube and connector adapter. But, I made my own tube so I could undersized it so it will be a loose fit on every hilt. Some are ridiculously undersized and require a lot of sanding for blades to fit. And since I wanted this to be as universal as possible, I just printed my own. Since I’m assuming that you will print with opaque stock, I added windows for the LEDS. I’ve chosen to just have a 5 strip of 5050 WS2812B 144 px/m, which is what I use to make my blades, but 3535 should work just as well as long as you use 144px/m strip. I decided on 5 elements because I like to cut my blades to 124px and I can do two chargers with what’s left. Since you have to minimize power consumption while charging, I’ve added…

https://fredrik.hubbe.net/lightsaber/charging_adapter.html