UCS Millennium Falcon Questions
Hello!
Just a few questions regarding the UCS Millennium Falcon kit.
1) The lights of the set overall (interior, exterior white lights), will flicker when the engine lights are on, and/or when the red docking lights on the sides are blinking. Is this normal? Each USB power cable is plugged into a standard 5W power adapter, as recommended, in a grounded power strip. I do have the USB power cables from the kit plugged into USB extension cables in order to reach the power strip.
2) I have a sound file of the Falcon jumping into hyperspace that I loaded onto the sound card, but it is almost always cut short by a few seconds. It is only a 5 second clip. Is there a reason why it might be doing that?
3) Can the engine sounds and laser cannon automated sounds (when you press and hold "C" to turn on the cannon) be played at the same time? Sometimes they cancel each other out, usually the laser cannon will keep making sounds but the engine sounds will stop when they are both playing.
Nothing major, it's possible I made a mistake along the line or that there's some kind of power consumption issue. Otherwise the kit is great! Thanks.
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All great questions! Let me see if I can answer each:
- Yes, unfortunately this is a factor because the rear engines use so much power. In most cases the effect isn't highly visible but as you mention, it is more pronounced when the docking lights are also in a flashing pattern. There is a potential solution, basically supplying power at the far end of the lighting chain (where the top laser cannon plugs into the final BRANCH09 adapter board) in addition to supplying at the beginning of the chain. We've not tested this however. If it's something you'd like to try, let us know.
- Sounds should not get clipped. Does it always happen at the same spot in the sound clip? Is there a way, using a free app like Audacity, that you could try appending 1-2 seconds of silence to the end of the clip to see if that solves it? Again, this is not something we've seen before.
- The two sound modules are set up so the engines module has the engine sounds on it, and also the laser sounds for the secondary laser cannon (if installed). This is so the two lasers can fire at the same time, but it will interfere with the engines sound if the second cannon fires when an engine sound is still playing. On the laser sound module (2nd sound module), the main laser cannon sounds are stored along with the targeting computer telemetry sounds and any custom sounds you add. Each module can only play a single sound at the same time. Hopefully this helps explain the sound paths and any possible contention that may occur.
Hopefully this helps-- let me know if you have any further questions. Glad you are enjoying the kit!
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Rob Klingberg Hi, thanks! All super helpful.
Unfortunately, as of right now, the main engine sounds are always getting clipped at the peak of the startup sound, probably 8-10 seconds in. I am not sure why this is happening, as it hasn't been an issue in the past, but it is happening every time now. It also happens when the engine failure sound comes on, too. Any advice?
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Rob Klingberg This is happening just with the engine sounds being activated, too, without any laser cannon or custom sounds being activated.
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Hi, 99% of the time this is caused by supplying insufficient power to the kit. Either people use a single USB power supply for both power inputs instead of the two, separate supplies needed, or the USB supplies used do not each provide at least 1A of power.
We published an article explaining this in more detail, along with some resolution steps. Have a look and let me know if this fixes things. Thank you.
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Thank you! This is helpful. Surprisingly, I had switched from 2 separate, isolated off-brand USB power adapters (5V/1A, purchased new when I ordered this kit) to some old Apple adapters I have that provide the same power, figuring the Apple ones would be better. The Apple ones must be too old or inconsistent enough at this point (one is 14 years old from my first iPhone) to not be able to provide consistent, regular power. I switched back to the off-brand ones, and the kit is working mostly normally again but some occasional drop outs with custom sounds.
However, the engine start up (both regular and failed sounds) are playing fully through again, which was my main concern.
I think I need to find some better power adapters and possibly better USB cable extensions to handle the power needs of the kit with consistency. And likely reload my custom sounds. But this is definitely starting to solve the problem. Much appreciated!
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Chris Dee Awesome, glad to hear you're at least getting closer to normal operation. Yeah, some of those older Apple adapters can't keep up, and we've had customers too who thought they had Apple-branded chargers who instead had 3rd-party ones that, shall we say, didn't quite live up to their on-package labeling in terms of power.
If you continue to get issues with the engine sounds, you might also try turning the volume down just a bit-- it's when things get loud with lots of lights on that the kit really sucks the power.
Thank you again for letting us know about this issue, and keep us posted on your adapter search!
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Rob Klingberg The 3rd party adapters are working just fine. I had started using the thin extension cables from the light kit (the ones that are optional at the end of installation) to run USB power into my display case, with the expansion boards, so I would have long thin wire leads to go into the case. Trouble is, if I turn the volume down, the sounds don't really "make it" out of the display case very well, although it did solve the problem of sounds cutting out.
The issue with power/volume levels and sounds cutting out started after I switched from having the kit's main USB cables going straight into the Falcon to using the thin extension cables included with the kit. I just removed those extension cables and went back to plugging the USB cables directly into the power sockets on the light/sound kit boards within the Falcon. It works great at the highest volume now, no sounds are cutting out, and I can hear it well outside of the case. My guess is that the thin extension cables and expansion boards couldn't handle the power well enough for everything going at once, but that's not a problem. Everything works great now, just as it should!
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Chris Dee Thanks for the update-- glad to hear all is working! I think you may be onto something with the cables-- they are definitely thinner than a straight USB. If you still want to try using longer cables, you might pick up some of these. They're thicker cables than the ones provided with the kit, but the same length.