Razer Megalodon Headset LED Mod!

[Icyhaze]

So my LED's went out a while ago, i have had this headset for awhile and i missed the lights. I did some research and found out there were LED's inside, took it apart, and went to work.

I didn't get too many pictures when i was taking it apart, more so when i was putting it together.

This is what was hooked up originally, a little board with resistors and 3 LED's. All of them were blue and were right angle 0603s, or the same size, and they faced into a clear piece of plastic to distribute the light.



This is what i hooked up, i took topbuzz's fader code and put it on a chip, and hooked up a few LED's to test it out after some probing with the DMM.




Soldered and glued in a socket for the chip, so i can take it out and program it faster/slower if i wanted.






Since there will be 3 different colors, i need 4 wires to run to the other earphone, negative, and all 3 different positives. I am using one of the two old cables that were used for the original LED's and running a new cable through along with the old, the new one has 3 wires in it.






I still have not decided on what three colors i want to use, 5mm and 3mm LED's are too big to fit in there and get the light to look right, i have 4 blue and 2 red 0603s left, not sure if i want red, green, and blue or red, green, and yellow. I would put one of each in each side, and they would be hooked up to the same color as the other side, so they will fade together.


Here is a little video of it in action.
http://s808.photobucket.com/user/Krazykid122/media/LEDDemoone_zps2968e468.mp4.html



Ill post the rest when i get my LED's decided and installed

[dark_skeleton]

Nice, finally someone capable posted about it somewhere. Good job getting inside these, how did you open them? Are they glued or did you lever them?

I had two headsets (sold one), in both of them LEDs went out. I was tinkering with my headset a few weeks ago to find the cause of the problem, but was unable to. Apparently the LEDs are WORKING! yes, working! Just unsolder LED wires inside the control pod and connect them to a 4.5V power supply (mine provided 4.65V, using multimeter) and poof! working!

PROOF:


What's strange though is that adding any resistor (even two 100Ohms parallel, so 50 Ohms) makes them stop working again.

I couldn't get to the bottom of this problem, but here's what I found:
When LEDs aren't connected, the voltage on LED pins in the control pod is 4.43V.
HOWEVER after connecting the LED wires to those pins, voltage drops to around 1.3-1.6V... Huh? Why is that happening? Why can this be happening? My first thought is that there's a voltage regulator on top of the board, under the shielding, which just stops working properly after some time.

Also, I looked for another power source for LEDs on the board and found one. It's providing 4.36V and if you solder the plus wire there (green circle in the photo), LEDs work! No voltage drop!


There is a small problem though, it looks like that pin also provides unfiltered power to some audio circuitry. After a while I could hear strange hissing high-frequency noises in my headphones and cups were really warm over LEDs. I don't know if the noise was because of lack of filtering, or if it were LEDs that made it.

I wonder what would the next step be? Please let me know if your LEDs work after connecting them directly to a power source (use the wires that are soldered to the main board though, not directly, since there are a few capacitors on the way)

Since you've already disassembled the LED pack, can you tell me if they are serial or parallel? If they were serial, that would explain why they need 4.5V (1.5V each)

EDIT: replaced links with image tags

[Icyhaze]

It has been quite a few weeks since i put my hands back onto my headset LED mod, with the exception of still using them on the daily lol. I don't quite remember the voltages, but they were around 4 volts, when it worked, I guess some of the LEDs went bad, shorting the circuit, causing the low to no voltage. when i unhooked BOTH of the discs with the LEDs i got a good voltage. I did solder into the main power on the board and it worked, i do get a weird noise that constantly fades in and out of the right ear, its annoying when nothing is on, but if something is playing i cant really hear it, ill have to look into that later.

Though LEDs are cheap, and easy to order, i just haven't had tome to go to the bank and put in a few dollars, (i haven't used it since i opened the account lmao..) and tinker around with it. I did decide on what i was going to use, only 2 colors on each side, red and blue. i was thinking 3 of each color on each side, maybe 2.

I assume you got the LED part dismantled if you say you have done testing and such. I just noticed you dismantled the maelstrom module, i haven't touched that, i ONLY took apart the headphones, as that is where i found the problem to be.

As for taking the headset apart, your ear cushions will come off if you pinch the cushion, and turn the left one counter clock wise, you will fill it like pop off, and the right one clockwise to remove. You just pull that off, and there are six (IIRC) small Philips head screws to remove, then its all apart pretty much, just pull the speaker cup off. You will have access to the board inside the ear cup, which is where i did all my stuff without touching the maelstrom.

[dark_skeleton]

Haha this thread will evolve veeeeeeeeeery slowly

It has been quite a few weeks since i put my hands back onto my headset LED mod, with the exception of still using them on the daily lol. I don't quite remember the voltages, but they were around 4 volts, when it worked, I guess some of the LEDs went bad, shorting the circuit, causing the low to no voltage. when i unhooked BOTH of the discs with the LEDs i got a good voltage. I did solder into the main power on the board and it worked, i do get a weird noise that constantly fades in and out of the right ear, its annoying when nothing is on, but if something is playing i cant really hear it, ill have to look into that later.

So far so good, I got the exact same result. I wonder what's wrong with that voltage drop...

I assume you got the LED part dismantled if you say you have done testing and such.

You're actually wrong here. I didn't get to the LED board as you did/ I actually did everything on the main board. I have dismantled ear cups too (it was fairly easy) many times before, but could never get INSIDE that plastic part with LEDs themselves. Did they use glue there or can I safely use a screwdriver/card to lift that? There are wires going outside the earcup and into the part with LEDs, how did you get it open?

[Icyhaze]

The little razer logos on the side pop out, use a very small flathead or something, it has double stick tape like stuff holding it on, and yeah lol, slowly but SURELY! There is alot going on in life at the moment haha haven't had any toy time.

[dark_skeleton]

Makes sense, I didn't want to break it so I didn't put any more pressure when I was disassembling my unit (therefore I wasn't able to take the LED part apart).
Which part exactly comes off?

[Icyhaze]

Top Arrow, just pry it up



Edit: keep me updated, i dont have progress of my own, sill use mine LED-less haha, alot going on atm. I still get on here and look around though.