TOPIC: Spark Color2 issues with light/sound

Hi everyone.

I have a Hero tier Chosen hilt. Sometimes I've added things such as music to the memory card, as well as editing motion values, colour values, etc.

But lately, whenever I boot up the saber and activate it, the lights and sounds cut out either with a slight movement, or just within seconds.

I've checked the memory card, and tried using a different memory card with the same files, and the problem is still present.

I've had a loot at the master.ini config file, but can't even begin to imagine what I may have gotten wrong on it.

So I'm as yet unsure if the problem is to do with settings/configuration, or a possible hardware problem I'm not aware of.

Has anyone had any issues similar to this? I'd appreciate any advice/assistance, as I really like this saber.

It can be a lot of things, recently on a Ignitor 2 build I had a bad battery PCB that would cause it to cut off when I moved it, clashed it or used the aux button. On my Monarchs spark 2 one of the resistors short so was having a similar issue just not as frequent as with battery, but I'm sure there other things that can cause it I have yet to experience.

When you cut off, can you explain in more detail? Does it completely shut off? Does it immediately reboot? Do the accent LEDs (lit switches) behave different?

Completely stops, then does the boot up sound again after a second or 2. ignite it again repeat...the ignitor 2 is in my K4 hilt so no lit switches. I've never had the problem again after replacing the battery. Again its rare to have a bad battery pcb, but it can happen.

Really dumb question:

Did you charge it yet? Just cutting out sounds like what a low/dead battery does.

A couple more questions:

Did you follow all of the instructions for editing the SD card, especially the process for adding to SaberTracks, in the Spark Color 2 manual?

Are you using the Spark Color Config Editor to edit the motion/color settings, or are you manually editing the text files?

If it's not the battery, my guess is that you did something you shouldn't have and your files are corrupted, or you have the wrong value in there somewhere for something if you were manually editing the .ini files. If you didn't backup your SD card before changing things (which you should always do), you can find a set of Default Files here, though they may not be the same as you got from SF (my Hero had an older set with couple different fonts). Just follow the instructions in the manual for replacing files (backup, format card, copy over one folder at a time) and you should be good to go. If the problem persists after replacing the files with new defaults, then it's probably a hardware issue.

I had a similar issue with my Fury a while back. The problem ended up being the audio format for some of the sounds on the board; if they aren't proper bitrate etc. the board will crash completely when trying to play them. For my saber it was a swing sound, so occasionally when the board decided to play this specific swing noise the saber would turn off completely.

A quick thing you could do is use the Config Editor's conversion options to reformat the sounds on the board to make sure they are set up properly.

I'd reformat the SD card first and try the default files - if the problem goes away then it was related to either the SD card needing format, or your files have issues (bad audio formatting, or not running them through the config editor)

If the problem persists, then you likely have an electronics issue. Tripping the PCB sounds most likely, but that could be caused by a number of things. If the PCB gets a drop in current (say from a bad connection in the recharge port, or partially broken wire on the power leads) then it will trip and the board will reboot. Same thing if it gets runaway current, so lets say there is a voltage spike on an LED, then the current will rise dramatically and trip the battery.

So, if formatting the SD card doesn't fix it (along with making sure battery is fully charged), then get an RMA started with customer service.

One of the reasons I wanted to stress converting the sound files is because (at least in my Fury) the NEC default files also wouldn't launch in my saber. Format with a clean install wound up crashing every attempt (seemed strange to me, but I just shrugged and kept troubleshooting). Once I loaded my backup copy of SF standard files (just a copy of the SD card contents before I started modifying sounds/color options) the saber would boot. So (from my own experience) I wouldn't guarantee that it's hardware based on the NEC files alone. If in can be confirmed that the saber crashes while running one of the SF provided fonts (either left in one of the other sound font slots or from a backup) I would feel more comfortable with that conclusion.

you'd still need to run the default files through the config editor after format.

Jas-Ot wrote: its a good habit to have anyway. I've just become accustomed to doing this before I copy and paste to the SD, just like formatting the SD card.