This tutorial will guide you on how to replace the wires between the battery holder and power supplier & charger module.
The LED matrix display used in 2048 can draw up to 4A current when all the pixels are illuminated to their full brightness. To prevent a safer discharge rate for the battery, power supplier & charger module has been designed to provide a maximum amount of 2A current. However, the wires between battery holder and the module allow up to 0.65A current to pass from the battery to the system.
For most of the video games and animations you will be coding, this amount of current would be sufficient to display your work. However, if you exceed this current need by illuminating more LED chips simultaneously, the wires will create high resistance in the system causing a voltage drop. As a consequence, 2048 will reboot itself.
If you experience the rebooting issue or need more LED chips to be illuminated simultaneously, we advise you follow this tutorial and replace the battery holder wires with thicker ones. Let's get started!
You will need:
- Soldering iron
- Solder
- Soldering flux
- Side cutting pliers
- Thicker wires (24/0.2 mm equipment wires are used for this tutorial)
Please ask for advice or supervision if you do not have any previous experience with soldering.
1. Heat the soldering points on the power supplier & charger module with your soldering iron and remove the cables.
2. Push the red and black wires towards inside the battery holder through the holes in the corner.
3. Rotate the connection point of the poles upwards by gently pulling the wire, it should rotate easily.
4. By using your side cutting pliers, loosen the clamps that hold the wire in its place. Do not damage the clamps as we will need them in the next steps.
5. Cut a piece of the thicker wire as the same length of the previous one. Then, get rid of the isolation part at both tips of the wire with the side cutting pliers.
6. Place the new wires between the clamps just like the previous ones you have removed. Then, gently tighten the clamps to hold the wires firmly in their places.
7. Apply a tiny bit of solder to make sure there is good connectivity between the wires and the poles of the battery holder. However, this is a tricky part and requires some soldering experience. If you hold your soldering iron more than just a couple of seconds, you will be melting the plastic casing of the battery holder. Do not spend more than 2 seconds. Applying some flux to the area will help you get this done quickly.
8. Rotate the connection points of the poles downwards, and pass the wires through the hole in the corner as they were initially.
9. We will be soldering the other ends of the wires to the bottom of the power supplier & charger module. This makes it much easier to solder as all the other components are on the other side of the PCB. Make sure ( - ) pole of the battery holder is connected to B- on the module, and ( + ) pole is connected to B+.
That's it! Now you will not be experiencing the rebooting issue anymore and you can illuminate many more LED chips at the same time.
Here is a photograph from a test we have conducted. The test code illuminates LED chips one by one, starting from (0, 0) to (63, 31), with the density of light being RGB(1, 1, 1) - dim white. After each loop is completed, the density is increased to (2, 2, 2), then (3, 3, 3) and so on.
With the original wires, the voltage drop occured around 0.62A - 0.66A, restricting the system from drawing more current. After replacing the wires, there is no significant voltage drop up to 2A, which is the maximum allowed current from the power supplier & charger module.
