TOPIC: ASP electronics fixed (SaberCore 2 standby fixed)

Hi, just wanted to share some good news. The high-standby-power issue has been fixed on the current ASP electronics kits. I'm calling it a "SaberCore 2.1" driver because it fixed the biggest and most common issue people have been reporting about the SaberCore 2.0 boards.

The short version is: Standby power has been reduced from 200+ mA to about 4.5 mA. This means it'll now take about a month to drain a cell instead of a day, and there should be no more heat-related issues.

Here the new board's power graph with a 3.64V NCR18650B cell. I was too impatient to charge the battery before testing, but the blade-on power would be much higher with a full cell:

It's now going into sleep mode immediately after the sound and/or blade stops, and it idles at an average of about 4.5mA. So, with an updated driver board it's now safe to leave the battery in while the saber isn't being used, but you should still remove the battery if the saber will be unused for more than a couple weeks.

For reference, here is how the older version behaved. The important part is that the old board never went below 200mA, which is the issue that is now fixed on current drivers. Also, the battery here was at 4.06V (if I recall correctly), so the blade-on power is higher.


This is a pretty major upgrade, especially for ASP owners who have no charge port.

That's...very good to know. Nice find!

So to get that feature we need to send the board in to SF, right?

Borommakot wrote: I can't speak for SaberForge, but I would imagine they're probably using the good version in everything currently shipping and they probably RMA any affected drivers which have issues while still under warranty. SF may have had a bad batch or something, but they're pretty good about taking care of customers.

One of my ASP kits got speaker damage from a pommel issue, so I sent the pommel and all-in-one driver/speaker/battery unit in for RMA service. When the parts came back, I noticed the driver no longer got hot so I did some testing and it seems to be a newer upgraded version.

So, if your driver isn't functioning correctly, like if it repeats "Sabercore... Sabercore..." on boot, you should be able to request RMA service and get a better one. If it's not misbehaving though, I doubt it would be eligible.

For any definitive answers, contact customer service directly. I'm just guessing.

Mostly, I wanted to let people know that this oft-reported issue appears to be fixed.

I would love something to be wrong as an excuse to get the newer board but to be honest really not worth me paying for what it'd cost to send it back and back again

Interesting read! Good to have an in-house Forum expert on the electronics, ToyKeeper!