#4977748
georgenovak wrote: January 24th, 2023, 10:42 am First of all, kudos on all the wonderful mods to the HasLab pack. You are truly doing some amazing work, and also trailblazing for many of us. I'm just starting on my journey inside the pack, and have a few questions (hopefully not repeat questions).
I know you are using a TalentCell Rechargeable 6000mAh DC 12V/5V USB D YB1206000-USB without the enclosure to power the pack. That is a 12 and 5 volt battery unit, so I see you ran a USB cable out the 5 volt port and into the battery compartment of the pack. I'm assuming you just tapped into the red/black wires in the battery compartment.
And also from the other comments, I see the pack is running just fine off 5 volts. The 12 volt supply is going to be used for other mods like better sound, more lights, etc.
So, for my question, I'm wondering if I could use my USB power bank (10,000mAh) instead of a TalentCell kit for now. I would run a USB cable from the pack's spare open compartment to the battery compartment, then connect that to my power bank located in the spare compartment. I could also install a USB passthru port, so I could put the power bank on my belt (like I do for my other packs). This allows me to change battery packs without taking off the pack.
Sorry for the long post, but I'm just confirming that your pack is running of 5 volt USB and it is not having issues.
Cheers - George
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I have done the talentcell mod. Yes, the pack runs off 5v usb of the talentcell. DO NOT feed 12v to the haslab micro board. It only takes 5v. The 6000 mAh battery fits inside the pack when you remove the housing. Your bigger battery may not fit inside the pack.
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#4977751
gpstar wrote: January 24th, 2023, 10:24 am
Mr Stay Puft wrote: January 24th, 2023, 6:26 am

I have the exact same issue. Using the same 50w amp with 120w 4" car speakers. The same exact sound coming thru. Following this conversation hoping for a fix. I don't have a lot of knowledge in this area. Sort of just following in other's footsteps so far. I don't understand why gpstar doesn't have the same issue since their setup is similar to ours.
I hope you are able to solve it, did you try the aux port idea that was mentioned above? I would test but my pack is apart and I ripped out the stock microcontroller to be replaced with a Arduino...
Well this is discouraging. I get my amp and speakers today. Ill report back on my results. But so far, Ive read three posts that have same "alarm" sound. Im guessing its ground loop noise. I will see.
#4977753
Yanks1023 wrote: January 24th, 2023, 1:19 pm I have done the talentcell mod. Yes, the pack runs off 5v usb of the talentcell. DO NOT feed 12v to the haslab micro board. It only takes 5v. The 6000 mAh battery fits inside the pack when you remove the housing. Your bigger battery may not fit inside the pack.
Great, thanks for the info! My power bank is really small, about 1 inch longer than a deck of cards but the same width and height. Must be all one battery in there as it powers my other packs all day without dropping below 30%. I'll have to see how it works with the HasLab pack and go from there. Thanks!

Oh, and no issues with 12 volts to the wrong place; this power bank is 5 volts only.
#4977759
gpstar wrote: January 24th, 2023, 10:24 am
Mr Stay Puft wrote: January 24th, 2023, 6:26 am

I have the exact same issue. Using the same 50w amp with 120w 4" car speakers. The same exact sound coming thru. Following this conversation hoping for a fix. I don't have a lot of knowledge in this area. Sort of just following in other's footsteps so far. I don't understand why gpstar doesn't have the same issue since their setup is similar to ours.
I hope you are able to solve it, did you try the aux port idea that was mentioned above? I would test but my pack is apart and I ripped out the stock microcontroller to be replaced with a Arduino...
I get the same exact sound going AUX. Not even installing a ground loop isolator board fixed it.
Guess ill just be using two batteries.
#4977767
Spectregater wrote: January 24th, 2023, 4:48 pm
gpstar wrote: January 24th, 2023, 10:24 am

I hope you are able to solve it, did you try the aux port idea that was mentioned above? I would test but my pack is apart and I ripped out the stock microcontroller to be replaced with a Arduino...
I get the same exact sound going AUX. Not even installing a ground loop isolator board fixed it.
Guess ill just be using two batteries.
Same issue confirmed. But when I unplug the power cell from the main board it goes away. I tried two separate talentcells and sounds great. Weird Gpstar hasnt heard this...
#4977775
Yanks1023 wrote: January 24th, 2023, 5:42 pm
Spectregater wrote: January 24th, 2023, 4:48 pm

I get the same exact sound going AUX. Not even installing a ground loop isolator board fixed it.
Guess ill just be using two batteries.
Same issue confirmed. But when I unplug the power cell from the main board it goes away. I tried two separate talentcells and sounds great. Weird Gpstar hasnt heard this...
Ok, so this is interesting. I can also confirm that if I unplug my Talentcell and run the pack off the D cell batteries and the amp off the Talentcell, the bar graph alarm sound goes away, and it sounds fine. Something about the Talentcell powering the amp and the board it doesn't like. Gpstar soldered wire directly to the Talentcell board and I used 2 pigtails I made from a USB cable and a barrel plug cable. Not sure if that makes a difference.
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#4977777
Mr Stay Puft wrote: January 25th, 2023, 12:15 am
Yanks1023 wrote: January 24th, 2023, 5:42 pm
Same issue confirmed. But when I unplug the power cell from the main board it goes away. I tried two separate talentcells and sounds great. Weird Gpstar hasnt heard this...
Ok, so this is interesting. I can also confirm that if I unplug my Talentcell and run the pack off the D cell batteries and the amp off the Talentcell, the bar graph alarm sound goes away, and it sounds fine. Something about the Talentcell powering the amp and the board it doesn't like. Gpstar soldered wire directly to the Talentcell board and I used 2 pigtails I made from a USB cable and a barrel plug cable. Not sure if that makes a difference.
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Spectregater wired his onto the board like I did. Though I do notice your amps seem to be manufactured differently than mine.
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#4977783
Mr Stay Puft wrote: January 25th, 2023, 12:15 am
Yanks1023 wrote: January 24th, 2023, 5:42 pm Same issue confirmed. But when I unplug the power cell from the main board it goes away. I tried two separate talentcells and sounds great. Weird Gpstar hasnt heard this...
Ok, so this is interesting. I can also confirm that if I unplug my Talentcell and run the pack off the D cell batteries and the amp off the Talentcell, the bar graph alarm sound goes away, and it sounds fine. Something about the Talentcell powering the amp and the board it doesn't like. Gpstar soldered wire directly to the Talentcell board and I used 2 pigtails I made from a USB cable and a barrel plug cable. Not sure if that makes a difference.
This issue is also common with arduinos. I can't explain it fully, but it has to do with interference/noise that gets generated by feeding both the amp and music generator with the same power source. I think it has to do with the dynamic high/low power demands of the speaker and how that affects other devices connected to the same power source. I wish I could explain it better, but yeah you need two seperate power sources or a way to fully isolate individual feeds off one source. It's why high end audio receivers have multiple amps.
#4977786
Yanks1023 wrote: January 24th, 2023, 5:42 pm
Spectregater wrote: January 24th, 2023, 4:48 pm

I get the same exact sound going AUX. Not even installing a ground loop isolator board fixed it.
Guess ill just be using two batteries.
Same issue confirmed. But when I unplug the power cell from the main board it goes away. I tried two separate talentcells and sounds great. Weird Gpstar hasnt heard this...
Oh just wait till you hook the wand up and it sounds 100 times worse.
#4977787
Mr Stay Puft wrote: January 25th, 2023, 12:15 am
Yanks1023 wrote: January 24th, 2023, 5:42 pm
Same issue confirmed. But when I unplug the power cell from the main board it goes away. I tried two separate talentcells and sounds great. Weird Gpstar hasnt heard this...
Ok, so this is interesting. I can also confirm that if I unplug my Talentcell and run the pack off the D cell batteries and the amp off the Talentcell, the bar graph alarm sound goes away, and it sounds fine. Something about the Talentcell powering the amp and the board it doesn't like. Gpstar soldered wire directly to the Talentcell board and I used 2 pigtails I made from a USB cable and a barrel plug cable. Not sure if that makes a difference.
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I originally had it wired like yours. And thought the same thing so I soldered it to the board. No difference.
#4977801
With the wand finished, I have been tearing through the pack. Made good progress today.

I finally have control of the power cell led strip. Since I already have control of the cyclotron led's, and I am tied into all the switches on the pack. It is time to start coding the rest of the pack sequences and communication with the updated wand and sound effects. The pack is so much a joy to work on vs the wand.

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#4977807
Sorry if it seems we are hijacking your thread gpstar.

So even with using two batteries I was getting a little feedback/noise from the speakers. I was able to eliminate it by hooking one wire from SPK0 on the board to either the left or right input on the amp and the other wire to the middle ground terminal. Of course that limits you to only one speaker so I added a short jumper wire between the left and right input on the amp. And now get sound from both speakers.
I of course tested that with only using one battery but it didn't fix the problem.

Oh well I've got nice clear sound now with no noise/interference by using two batteries so I'll just stick with that solution. Maybe now I can start on visual mods.
#4977812
Well, I gotta appreciate all the work you've put in @gpstar. I've definitely put my wand controller through the ringer trying to hack it, but to no avail. These timeouts are just not easy to work around, and the worst part about the pack timeout is that it effectively puts the controller into a deep sleep mode, which makes sense to help conserve battery power. The only resolution once the pack goes to sleep is to break the connection to SW1 either by flipping the main switch under the ion arm or (as some people have done) splice in a momentary switch to the positive wire and place that in an easier spot to access while wearing the pack. Needless to say I'm ready to give up on the stock hardware and move on to a custom solution. I had some Arduino Nano's and DFPlayer chips that I was intending to use originally, but I really like the specs and abilities on that wav trigger board. If there's any chance you're taking beta testers to try out the custom hardware and software I've "got the tools and the talent" to put it into action.
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#4977835
jonogunn wrote: January 23rd, 2023, 10:48 am
NoahVoiding wrote: January 23rd, 2023, 1:10 am Side note. I’ve made a plug and play “always on” mod for the pack. No soldering required. My buddy is starting to source parts in bulk so we can start building them. I’ll be posting a demo video on my Instagram soon. Instagram: Playday_tng
Will u be posting how to do it or just selling as a kit?
Selling as a kit.
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#4977840
jbp1984 wrote: January 25th, 2023, 3:58 pm @gpstar

Maaan!!! I gotta thank you for doing all this and showing exactly how you did it! I've never even held a soldering iron before let alone have even heard of Arduinos before, and I successfully completed the keep alive mod! Thank you for the directions!!!!
Cool, glad it worked out for you.
#4977841
JustinDustin wrote: January 25th, 2023, 2:32 pm Well, I gotta appreciate all the work you've put in @gpstar. I've definitely put my wand controller through the ringer trying to hack it, but to no avail. These timeouts are just not easy to work around, and the worst part about the pack timeout is that it effectively puts the controller into a deep sleep mode, which makes sense to help conserve battery power. The only resolution once the pack goes to sleep is to break the connection to SW1 either by flipping the main switch under the ion arm or (as some people have done) splice in a momentary switch to the positive wire and place that in an easier spot to access while wearing the pack. Needless to say I'm ready to give up on the stock hardware and move on to a custom solution. I had some Arduino Nano's and DFPlayer chips that I was intending to use originally, but I really like the specs and abilities on that wav trigger board. If there's any chance you're taking beta testers to try out the custom hardware and software I've "got the tools and the talent" to put it into action.
I am going to release my instructions and code here when I finish. I hope to be finished sometime next week.

A nano has just enough pins to hook up all the existing lights and switches from the wand (as long as you power the slo-blo led and the top led off the same pin). I thought about using a teensy but stock on them is low and hard to find and you can get a pack of 3 nano clones for the price of a teensy.

For the pack I thought about a teensy again but because of stock issues I will use a Arduino Mega instead. I am going to experiment with chaining the powercell led strip to the cyclotron LEDs, as that would simplify a few things I have in mind.
#4977844
I would hope it's possible to swap out some of the individual LED's with a chain of individual Neopixels in the wand. That's a pattern I've used from another wand build solution which just need a data pin to drive the slo-blo, top right, top left, and vent lights. I know the end of the wand has 5 RGB(W?) LED's driven by a data pin. The downside is obviously that you're replacing even more of the stock internals and soldering those pixels is a PITA for sure.

On a slightly related note, I think I've discovered a way to defeat the 30-second timeout in the wand without triggering any sounds or actions from the wand. It also only takes soldering to 2 pins but I couldn't find a better way to power it from the U7 port without eventually triggering the wand activation. My solution was to run additional always-on power to the wand with my new hose connection. The other downside is that it does not yet defeat the 200-second pack timeout--I think the requirement of varying the power draw from the pack wasn't addressed by my solution and so the pack still powers down everything eventually :(
#4977846
JustinDustin wrote: January 26th, 2023, 5:23 am I would hope it's possible to swap out some of the individual LED's with a chain of individual Neopixels in the wand. That's a pattern I've used from another wand build solution which just need a data pin to drive the slo-blo, top right, top left, and vent lights. I know the end of the wand has 5 RGB(W?) LED's driven by a data pin. The downside is obviously that you're replacing even more of the stock internals and soldering those pixels is a PITA for sure.

On a slightly related note, I think I've discovered a way to defeat the 30-second timeout in the wand without triggering any sounds or actions from the wand. It also only takes soldering to 2 pins but I couldn't find a better way to power it from the U7 port without eventually triggering the wand activation. My solution was to run additional always-on power to the wand with my new hose connection. The other downside is that it does not yet defeat the 200-second pack timeout--I think the requirement of varying the power draw from the pack wasn't addressed by my solution and so the pack still powers down everything eventually :(
Swapping out the LEDs is no problem. Yes you are correct, the wand barrel has 5 RGB LEDs on a strip driven by a data pin. However at that point, just print a q-pack 3.0 wand, as it's much easier to work inside the body of that wand. My goal is to use all the stock lighting and switches, but swapping out the boards. The Hasbro wand is a pita to work on inside. After I finish this, my next project is to take a q-pack 3.0 wand and wire it up with the same electronics I put in the Hasbro wand, but with upgraded bargraph LEDs, instead of the 5 individual LED's Hasbro uses, I will put in the popular 28segment barmeter bargraph and other light upgrades.

The same is in the pack, 13 leds in the powercell and 12 in the cyclotron. They are chained together on the Haslab microcontroller.

On another note, I just successfully chained the powercell and cyclotron led's on a arduino and driven by 1 data pin. So that makes things much simpler.

The one thing I hate about data pin driven LED strips like neopixels, etc is the temporary blocking of interrupts which throws off Timer0 and other Timers + anything relying on interrupts (servo motors for instance). I am thinking of offloading the powercell and cyclotron control to a nano while the mega is the heart and time keeper of the pack. I just need to time the tx/rx communication between the 2 correctly so the temporary stoppage of interrupts does not miss data sent from the Mega to the Nano. I will probably do a "safe to send data" command from the Nano to the Mega to let the Mega know it is time to send data if required. We will see. I will try with just 1 unit, if it becomes a issue I will offload it to a nano.
#4978007
jbp1984 wrote: January 29th, 2023, 9:16 am Was anyone able to figure out the sound issue? I tried and had the same interference noise other people were getting. A guy on FB did the same set up but used a ground loop and he said that solved his problem. I don't know anything about electronics so I don't know how to do one to test but apparently it worked for him...
A ground isolator or use a separate power source for the amp. Some are having the issue, and some are not. I did not.
#4978008
Started implementing the sound effects. If you have any feature requests, let me know. I will be deep diving into the pack code over the next few days, including wand communication.

Some of the things I will be doing:
-Some wand sounds playing back over the pack during firing
-All of the Haslab features (84/2021 modes for both pack and wand), ribbon cable alarm, vibration toggle on/off for pack and wand.
-Cyclotron light rotation switch (clockwise and anti-clockwise)
-A smoke enabled/disabled switch, in case you do not want to install or disable smoke effects.
-Video game firing modes
-Venting/overheat mode only when the wand is at full power mode. (Smoke as well)
-Smoke during the ribbon cable alarm sequence??
-Music playback and control
-A settings mode from the wand where you can adjust volume, start stop music, independent music volume control, etc.
-Internal Cyclotron lights (**Something for later in the future, I plan to either 3D print a new cyclotron and put lights in it that will be controlled by the pack**)

If anybody has better sound effects, particularly for when the ribbon cable is released and the alarm goes off, feel free to send them my way. At the moment I am just using venting beeps for now until something better can be found.

Last edited by gpstar on January 29th, 2023, 12:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
#4978010
kahuna900 wrote: January 29th, 2023, 11:12 am So, since you seem to be using the factory switches and LEDs, what are the odds of making this a plug and play option using the stock plugs instead of soldiering?
For the pack it will be plug and play. The wand will need soldering as Hasbro soldered most of the wires to the board. The other wand option is to 3D print one and stick the electronics into it. That is another plan I am going to do after all this is finished.
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