So I’ve been working on a Cal Kestis lightsaber for a bit now. Burned through 2 Proffieboards (Love unstable hands lol).
I got the Tritium Blade from electronics123/Tritium sabers and I can’t seem to find anyone talking about actually fixing the issue where it doesn’t show colors properly. Solid R/G/B are fine but any mixed colors like C/Y/M/W are hit or miss at best.
I can tell it’s a voltage issue since if I set the blade length to, for example, the default 144leds, the ones that light up mix properly and have no color loss.
So what I’m wondering is if anyone’s figured out a solution to these things? I’m broke so buying new parts right now is out of the question. I’ll also post my config, though I don’t think it’s related.
I was contemplating running a voltage injection wire about halfway up the blade to see if that helps but I’m waiting for input before doing that.
Have you measured the voltage?
What kind of battery do you have?
An 18650 battery with a 3500mAh capacity. Think it’s rated for 3.6V (NL1835)
Problem is I’ve tested multiple batteries with the same result. All others at least 3.7V
Battery voltage at time of testing: 4.06V
Base of Tritium Blade at 144leds on white: 2.73V
Looks white
-Highest lit up Led: 2.73V
Base of Tritium Blade at Max length(474) on white:2.43V
Looks orange-yellow with blue flickering making it briefly white
-End of Blade: 2.37V
2.43v is low, and probably why you are seeing color changes.
The reason is that your battery is not rated for high enough current. (In fact, I don’t see any discharge current rating at all on that page you linked.) You need a protected battery that is rated for 15A or more. Note that 3500mAh is not a current rating, it only specifies how much power the battery can hold, not how fast you can discharge it.
I was aware it was capacity hahah
Wasn’t sure of the discharge amperage, but it definitely is under 15A, so I’ll dig through my batteries and see if I have any.
If not, got any surefire suggestions for batteries?
So I hooked a power supply directly to it. It doesn’t seem to want to draw more than 2A even when set higher
Little more testing and specific,
When negative is on common ground (this case the negative on a button since it’s the biggest thing to clamp onto in my case) and the positive on the positive terminal, the amperage draw is about 1.9-2.1amps
When the positive is directly on the strip, the draw goes up to about 3.6 amps.
And then negative and positive both on the strip maxes the psu to 6.1 but won’t light, but that was expected.
So I feel like even if I did give it 15amps, it still wouldn’t be given to the leds as I tried a 15amp battery with almost identical results as the 6amp battery.
Having the positive on the strip resulted in a bright orange instead of red when set to white, forgot to note that.
I’ve not seen anyone say that using a 15A battery fixing the issue either, most topics were dead after the fact, so not sure I have reference to that actually solving the issue. But could also be me being unable to use correct terms to find it. Not saying it doesn’t exist, just unable to find them myself.
Should also note I desoldered the positive and negative wires from the Proffieboard and powered it with a battery when doing both positive and negative directly on the leds.
This sounds like there is high resistance somewhere, causing voltage drops, which in turn would lead to lower current.
Do you have sufficiently thick cables for ~6-10 amps?
It could also be caused by cold solders, or by the “clamps”.
Whatever the reason, once you have it hooked up, you can measure where the voltage drops occur, more information here:
This may be true. However most strips draw a lot more power during startup, and the 15 amps is meant to give enough headroom to ignite the blade without tripping the protection circuit on the batter.
I think we all just assumed that the battery was the problem, because the battery you have is not very good, and not recommended. However, it’s possible that the voltage drops are the real problem, and the battery may work fine once those are fixed.
If I recall, most of the wiring is 20awg, with the only thing between positive and the strip being a kill switch.
Though I suspect my wiring method may also be a possible cause since I tapped into the killswitch - battery + on the board for it.
So I’ll look at the link you sent as well as double check the wiring and update with information afterward.
Welp, guess it’s a good thing I broke two boards prior to this one because I managed to desolder a capacitor (part C61).
Donor boards for the win here, I suppose. Now need to clean it up and basically start over. It was causing my USB hub to go haywire and wasn’t powering on. Fixed now, though. Soldering tiny components is a pain to say the least.