Blade Runner 2049 Officer K badge wallet

Victor Davion said:
For power I have a 150 mah as well as a 500 mah, both work with the panel.
Click to expand...
A couple of notes:
It's not good for the LED to have it connected directly to a 3.7V battery (which may be as high as 4.2V when fully charged) as there's no way of limiting the current the LED draws and it will fail prematurely. I'd recommend a 39 or 43 ohm resistor in series with the LED to limit the current to around 20mA when the battery is fully charged.
Your larger LiPo battery has a low voltage cut-off protection circuit built into it that prevents the cell voltage going below 3V, which would cause damage to the cell when it's recharged. The smaller cell does not have a built-in protection circuit, and if it's discharged below 3V you run the risk of damaging it when it's recharged. If you want to use it safely you ideally need an external over-discharge protection module between it and the load.
 
buzby said:
A couple of notes:
It's not good for the LED to have it connected directly to a 3.7V battery (which may be as high as 4.2V when fully charged) as there's no way of limiting the current the LED draws and it will fail prematurely. I'd recommend a 39 or 43 ohm resistor in series with the LED to limit the current to around 20mA when the battery is fully charged.
Your larger LiPo battery has a low voltage cut-off protection circuit built into it that prevents the cell voltage going below 3V, which would cause damage to the cell when it's recharged. The smaller cell does not have a built-in protection circuit, and if it's discharged below 3V you run the risk of damaging it when it's recharged. If you want to use it safely you ideally need an external over-discharge protection module between it and the load.
Click to expand...

Oh ok thanks! I had planned to run a switch in-between the battery and the LED, but will also look into adding a resistor in there (I have plenty of old circuit boards lying around so I might even have one). Did not know that about the battery discharge damage though, I think that ill have enough room to put in the larger battery but if not I may add in a protection module as well. Only thing is that once this is all put together Ill probably not have it switched on very much, but then again the battery could discharge just sitting there as well I suppose. Thanks again for the advice!

P.S If I end up using the iPhone backlight with a step up voltage regulator, should I also put in a resistor?
 
Victor Davion said:
If I end up using the iPhone backlight with a step up voltage regulator, should I also put in a resistor?
Click to expand...
The iPhone 5S backlight I used is designed to run at 20mA at 12V (there are 2 sets of 4 white LEDs in series, though one set of 4 LEDs is enough for the ID). Each white LED needs at least 3V light, so the 12V is split equally across all 4 LEDs. Ideally you would have a current limiting resistor between the LEDs and the power source, but my testing showed that using 2 CR2032 coin cells to power the boost converter it could just about deliver 25mA maximum at 12V (which decreases as the barreries discharge) so the LEDs were safe to use without a current limiting resistor. If a current limiting resistor was required I would have needed more than a 12V supply too as the limiting resistor bleeds off some of the voltage.

When I tested the Lithium Manganese pouch cell (which has similar discharge characteristics you your LiPo cells - it can dump a lot more current than a CR2032) I found that the initial current supplied to the LEDs peaked at over 30mA, which is getting into the damage territory. However, as the Lithium cells discharge quicker than the coin cells the peak current drops quite rapidly as the battery discharges. You may find that the battery doesn't last very long at all, which is why I went to using a 6V supply (2 CR2032s) for the boost converter. Increasing the supply voltage also decreases the current the boost converter requires to output 12V, making the batteries last longer as well.
 
buzby said:
The iPhone 5S backlight I used is designed to run at 20mA at 12V (there are 2 sets of 4 white LEDs in series, though one set of 4 LEDs is enough for the ID). Each white LED needs at least 3V light, so the 12V is split equally across all 4 LEDs. Ideally you would have a current limiting resistor between the LEDs and the power source, but my testing showed that using 2 CR2032 coin cells to power the boost converter it could just about deliver 25mA maximum at 12V (which decreases as the barreries discharge) so the LEDs were safe to use without a current limiting resistor. If a current limiting resistor was required I would have needed more than a 12V supply too as the limiting resistor bleeds off some of the voltage.

When I tested the Lithium Manganese pouch cell (which has similar discharge characteristics you your LiPo cells - it can dump a lot more current than a CR2032) I found that the initial current supplied to the LEDs peaked at over 30mA, which is getting into the damage territory. However, as the Lithium cells discharge quicker than the coin cells the peak current drops quite rapidly as the battery discharges. You may find that the battery doesn't last very long at all, which is why I went to using a 6V supply (2 CR2032s) for the boost converter. Increasing the supply voltage also decreases the current the boost converter requires to output 12V, making the batteries last longer as well.
Click to expand...

Thanks again for all the information, small electronics is definitely not my forte haha. Ill make sure to check my outputs then to see if the amperage is too high using my LiPo batteries and will find another solution if necessary.

By the way, is there any particular technique that you used to solder your wires onto the iPhone ribbon? I have soldered circuit board type pins, but never something quite that fine before.


Edit: My wallet shipped today so I should be able to complete my project in the next couple weeks or so assuming the badge gets shipped out sometime soon as well. :)
 
Last edited:
Victor Davion said:
By the way, is there any particular technique that you used to solder your wires onto the iPhone ribbon? I have soldered circuit board type pins, but never something quite that fine before.
Click to expand...
I used 2 cores stripped from an old hard disk ribbon cable. I stripped a small section of both cores at one end and split the strands of each core into 2 roughly equal bunches (there were only about 6 or 7 very fine strands in each bunch), twisted the strands of each bunch together and then tinned them so it was like they had been split in two, or like the tines of a fork. I then tinned the gold pads on the end of the backlight's ribbon cable (both sides of each of the outer pads - the top and bottom pads on each contact are commoned together) and then slid the contacts between the 'fork' of the tinned strands of my ribbon cable. Once it was in just the right place (which took a couple of goes) I then held the iron (using my finest tip, one intended for SMD work) onto the tinned strands which soldered them onto the tinned contacts. I then flipped the backlight over and repeated the process for the other tine of the fork on the bottom contact.

I then securely taped the backlight connector and my soldered joint lengthways along the bottom of the backlight using kapton tape to stop it getting stressed (the ribbon connector on the backlight is very delicate and wasn't designed to cope with much handling).

You could just solder the wires onto the top or bottom contacts, but it increases the stress on the contacts and you can end up with them lifting off the tiny ribbon cable (as the solder joint is stronger than the bond onto the mylar film backing.

A jeweller's loupe, magnifying visor or a 'third hand' with a good magnifier are essential really
 
Last edited:
buzby said:
I used 2 cores stripped from an old hard disk ribbon cable.
Click to expand...

Thats a great idea, I think I have a few things like that laying around. I do have some magnifier/clip type devices as well which will be very useful! I have a soldering gun, but it is made for more heavy duty applications so I may have to improvise something with that. Will definitely be a test for my dexterity though lol.
 
@warvanov very nice work! And thanks for sharing your work.

Does anyone know what language is used on the right side of K's ID card? It resembles Somali or Arabic to some degree depending on which way you look at the characters.
 
el toro said:
@warvanov very nice work! And thanks for sharing your work.

Does anyone know what language is used on the right side of K's ID card? It resembles Somali or Arabic to some degree depending on which way you look at the characters.
Click to expand...

I am by no means a language expert. I've been playing around with google translate a bit to see if I can find anything that looks similar and so far, Korean looks like the best candidate. I'm looking at the Korean alphabet on wikipedia and there are several characters that have some similarity to the last line of writing at the top right of the badge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul

There are lots of other possibilities, including Arabic, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, and several others.
 
Actually, I can read Korean and I'm sure we can rule out hangul. I'll keep researching as it might give us a hint as to the obscured text in dark blue print.

warvanov said:
I am by no means a language expert. I've been playing around with google translate a bit to see if I can find anything that looks similar and so far, Korean looks like the best candidate. I'm looking at the Korean alphabet on wikipedia and there are several characters that have some similarity to the last line of writing at the top right of the badge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul

There are lots of other possibilities, including Arabic, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, and several others.
Click to expand...
 
I think that we might be able to get a clearer picture of the text on the blue background by adjusting levels and contrast in Photoshop. I'll play around with that too.
 
I don't know if this is helpful or not but this was the most detail that I seemed to be able to get out of it.

Edited Image 01.png Edited Image 02.png
 
Last edited:
I don’t. But there’s only 3 or 4 of all different gauges. It’s not hard to find. It’s the one rolled with a grey and white paper backing. The different gauges have different colors.
 
Finally got the PVC cover for my wallet sorted out. I went for 0.35mm - I got samples of that and 0.6mm, which was too thick. I did some adhesive tests and found superglue worked well for both PVC to leather and PVC to itself (I also tried E6000 which held both joints and was a bit more flexible but it's not very controllable, and Thixofix contact cement with worked OK on the leather to PVC, but gave way on bonding PVC to itself).

I eyeballed a paper template first to work out the llength and width of the piece I needed to cut to wrap around and tuck in the open ends of the wallet. I then measured the template and cut it out of the PVC I did a dry run to check the length was still OK (it needed a little trimming) and discovered that the static adhesion of the PVC wrap to the inside of the PVC window on the ID side was strong enough that i wouldn't have to glue it. This was fortunate, as it had the potential to get very messy gluing it while tucking it in. That just meant I had to glue it under the badge side, which I did using a professional Loctite CA gel (it comes in packs called Takpak, for glueing mod wires to PCBs). This gave me the chance to position it perfectly before applying pressure to complete the bond.

While I had my ID and badge out to do this, I updated the ID transparency to warvanov 's latest version, after a bit of resizing and a slight adjustment of some of the elements to make it look right when sized for my backlight. Here's the results:
cover1.jpgcover2.jpgcover3.jpgcover4.jpg
I'm quite pleased with the way it looks. The PVC is wrapped tight enough that it clings to the surface of the leather so it doesn't really need to be stitched. It also clings to itself, which helps keep the wallet closed. The last picture is the best I've been able to get so far of it when it's lit up, and you can see it's bright enough to have effected the camera exposure. Easily a match for the brightness of the real prop in the film.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Looks great! I'm glad that the design worked for you.

I've got some transparent paper coming from amazon tomorrow so I'm going to try printing the design on that to see if it works. I might be able to use the same transparency as the wrap around plastic, depending on how thick it is and what the adhesive is like.

I've got an EL panel which fits the wallet I ordered, but I'm struggling with how to find a place for the inverter and power supply. I want to make the wallet a standalone prop without an external power source, even if it's a little thick, and I have no experience with with wiring or modifying electronics, so I'll just have to tinker with it I guess.
 
There is a small 3v button cell operated inverter but it will not be enough to power an EL panel that size.
 
This thread is more than 5 years old.

Your message may be considered spam for the following reasons:

  1. This thread hasn't been active in some time. A new post in this thread might not contribute constructively to this discussion after so long.
If you wish to reply despite these issues, check the box below before replying.
Be aware that malicious compliance may result in more severe penalties.

Similar threads

tierfonorbital
Deckard and K
Replies
3
Views
324
Noeland
Noeland
Rotund
Blade Runner Lobster Spinner
Replies
1
Views
239
Rotund
Rotund
JamesTalon
Blade Runner Optical Viewer Build
Replies
5
Views
694
eiri1234
eiri1234
propmainiac
blade runner blaster repair
Replies
2
Views
662
joberg
joberg
LimeyBuilds
Bringing the Blade Runner: Black Lotus Blaster to life
Replies
18
Views
1,195
pnag
pnag
Back
Top