Wiring Hot Toys Iron Men to external battery box (Pic heavy)

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Mr_Isamu

Just a little freaky
Joined
Nov 9, 2015
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Location
Netherlands
Hi guys,

I thought I would share my latest project. Everyone has issues with leaking batteries and battery life on their iron men and I have always wondered about the SOAP reactors but was put off by the price. While I am not skilled with electronics in any way I though I would see what I could come up with. I did some tests using external AA batteries and found that 3 AA batteries WILL BLOW the LED. This is because button batteries have an internal resistance which limits initial output to 1.5V but big batteries do not. I could probably find a current limiting resistor to do this but like I said I am new to all this. Testing with 2 batteries gives less light but theres no chance of blowing the LED as far as I could see (Try it at your own risk !). The wooden pieces are dowels the size of the batteries which I cut down to the right size and took off one side to make place for soldering the wires to. I use thumb tacks as contact points that I have cut down to glue to the dowel because its much easier to glue to the dowel than a flat piece of brass with the pin keeping it in place. I have wired up the workshop Tony Stark chest reactor in this way and the LED has been burning for 3 weeks ! Later I will wire the boxes up to an external adapter. I hope you guys find some inspiration and if I can improve this please let me know !

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I got a Soap Reactor. Plugs in. Turns on all 1/4 scale IM lights AND 8 LED spotlights with the flick of the wrist. Sometimes they all stay on for days at a time and never have to replace batteries.
 
Im sure they are awesome and more convenient than manually flicking a switch. I was just trying to get a similar result for a fraction of the cost.
 

I've tried ordering from them a few times, but they don't appear to ship to the UK :( The one distributor listed for North America (closest region to me) doesn't list them :(

I've actually had a similar idea to the OP for a while... just got to get around to it (although with almost every arc-reactor enabled figure on display, it could get messy...)
 
I've tried ordering from them a few times, but they don't appear to ship to the UK :( The one distributor listed for North America (closest region to me) doesn't list them :(

I've actually had a similar idea to the OP for a while... just got to get around to it (although with almost every arc-reactor enabled figure on display, it could get messy...)
They do ship to the uk buddy. I have 4 of them. Takes about a week from ordering to get here. If you can't order online then email them and they will sort via PayPal. Good luck. They are a must have.
 
They do ship to the uk buddy. I have 4 of them. Takes about a week from ordering to get here. If you can't order online then email them and they will sort via PayPal. Good luck. They are a must have.
Thanks for the info. I emailed them a while ago about an apparent bug in the website and got no response; I wasn't even sure they were still operating until I saw some new stuff up on there.

The web shop has always said "no shipping options" (or similar) for my address; I'll try emailing them :)
 
Hi guys,

I thought I would share my latest project. Everyone has issues with leaking batteries and battery life on their iron men and I have always wondered about the SOAP reactors but was put off by the price. While I am not skilled with electronics in any way I though I would see what I could come up with. I did some tests using external AA batteries and found that 3 AA batteries WILL BLOW the LED. This is because button batteries have an internal resistance which limits initial output to 1.5V but big batteries do not. I could probably find a current limiting resistor to do this but like I said I am new to all this. Testing with 2 batteries gives less light but theres no chance of blowing the LED as far as I could see (Try it at your own risk !). The wooden pieces are dowels the size of the batteries which I cut down to the right size and took off one side to make place for soldering the wires to. I use thumb tacks as contact points that I have cut down to glue to the dowel because its much easier to glue to the dowel than a flat piece of brass with the pin keeping it in place. I have wired up the workshop Tony Stark chest reactor in this way and the LED has been burning for 3 weeks ! Later I will wire the boxes up to an external adapter. I hope you guys find some inspiration and if I can improve this please let me know !

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I see this was posted a couple years ago. How has this held up since then? I'm currently looking to do something similar to light up my hall of armor and HT iron man figures all at once. I looking to use a universal power adapter, that allows me to select the power output which will be 4.5v, to power a USB hub. I'm waiting for USB male connectors to arrive so I can wire those to a dowel that will fit will the batteries fo just like you did. I see you used thumb tacks to help make contact. I'm going to try conductor copper tape. I have a few loose 3mm led bulbs that I'll use to experiment with. I'm still doing a bit of research to help me with this little project so we'll see how it goes[emoji28]
 
Yeah if you're going to go through all that trouble to wire them up, you might as well use an adapter instead of more batteries. I have mine set to just 3v, which is already plenty bright enough and makes me much less worried about ever overcharging the LEDs.

Plus it allows you to hook up other lights to the same adapter that only use 3v, like Star-Lord's helmet or the eye on a Terminator figure.


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Yeah if you're going to go through all that trouble to wire them up, you might as well use an adapter instead of more batteries. I have mine set to just 3v, which is already plenty bright enough and makes me much less worried about ever overcharging the LEDs.

Plus it allows you to hook up other lights to the same adapter that only use 3v, like Star-Lord's helmet or the eye on a Terminator figure.


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Nice setup man. It honestly isnt too much trouble. I enjoy doing these little side projects when I have time. I wont be using batteries, I'll be using a ac adapter to power a 10 port USB hub and maybe a experiment with adding a DC buck voltage regulator to which I'd like to use to light up my iron man figures. I currently have the ac adapter powering(4.5v) my hall of armor but would like to power it by connecting it to a port in the USB hub.
 
This has been holding up perfectly ! I also just use 3V batteries as I have found that with the big 1.5 AA batteries there is a spike when you switch them on which, if you dont have a current limiting resistor (I dont have any), could blow your LEDs. Oh and I also tried the conductor copper tape, but the surface area on the dowel was so small that it didnt stick at all. The thumb tacks gave the dowel something to stick to.

Good luck with your little experiment !
 
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