darkSpyro

Also will they ever burn out? Lets say 5 years later I decide to put a giant in a portal only to find out it won't light up anymore.

i have no idea. i was gonna make a topic just like this. i want to know how to make my Lignitor's head light up!

led's shouldn't burn out for thousands of hours

led's are wired to a chip in the base (not the rfid chip) that converts the skylander magic energy into electricity that can power the led

Now Activision is very protective of how they work internally. But this is the basic concept stuff.

Skylanders work through a similar concept to those wireless charging stations (they are usually called induction chargers). What it does, at a basic level, is create a magnetic field which is picked up by the chip in the figure to provide power to write to the small capacity flash chip in the base. Essentially, this is providing power without a cord.

Now, the reading of the chip is called Near Field Communication (NFC, or sometimes RFID - the WiiU has this in the controller, but it is not compatible with current Skylanders). This does not require power, but the writing of the chip does. A real world example of this would be those ID cards (not the swipe kind) that you hold up to a reader that lets you enter doors at secure places.

Now how does this apply to the Lightcores? Well, the power provided through the base is enough that it can also power small LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) which are wired inside the figures to the spots that light up. If the light is required in a particularly small place, they can use a fiber optic cable and shine the light in one end and it will come out the other. In other words, shining light on it makes the whole piece light up due to the light bouncing around inside the clear plastic. You may have seen something similar to this at the circus, with those light up toys that are a bunch of fibers that light up. You can make them different colors by giving a small amount of color to the plastic before it is molded.

LEDs tend to last a very long time, and take a tiny amount of power. They make a most Christmas tree lights out of them these days. They give a consistent light, take very little power, have less of a risk of fire because they generate almost no heat (heat generated is related to the amount of power used, the heat is a byproduct of the fiber generating light), and last many, many times longer than normal bulbs.

Now unless it is defective, the light won't burn out over the lifetime of the figure. In other words, as long as you have interest in the game, and then some. Skylanders Giants will be a distant memory by the time most of them burn out. If it doesn't light up there could be many reasons. First if it is a 3DS, the portal doesn't stay on after it reads the figure in. If the portal isn't lit up, the figure won't be either. Other possible things that could happen is if you drop it or bend it in the wrong place, you might break the fiber optic (a fiber optic has to remain in one piece to use the refraction lighting it up. A wire in the figure may also have come loose. The LED may also have burnt out, it does happen even though most last years and years. Or, if the figure won't read, the chip inside that receives the power could be defective. The best solution in all of these cases is to call Activision. As I understand their customer support for Skylanders is very good and they have a good policy towards defect replacement. It simply is not worth the time and effort to try and fix it yourself.

As far as creating light up effects that are not already in the figure, you might want to look up Jin's excellent work on this forum. He has a whole site dedicated to customizing action figures. Word of warning though, creating a lightcore effect in a non lightcore will be a lot more difficult (if not impossible) than adding or moving lights in a figure that already has them. The chip in them simply may not have a good way to do it, and it will definitely require hollowing it out to run the wiring, and replacing certain areas with materials that can show light. If it already has lights, you can run wires off the existing ones, and it may (as in Hothead) have room for wires already. Hothead is one of the "easier" examples, as his model actually looks to have been designed originally to have light up hands. The hand fires can be illuminated (the material is the same as the head), and the channels for wires are already there.

that was one of the most resourceful posts i have ever seen

Quote: defpally

Now Activision is very protective of how they work internally. But this is the basic concept stuff.

Skylanders work through a similar concept to those wireless charging stations (they are usually called induction chargers). What it does, at a basic level, is create a magnetic field which is picked up by the chip in the figure to provide power to write to the small capacity flash chip in the base. Essentially, this is providing power without a cord.

Now, the reading of the chip is called Near Field Communication (NFC, or sometimes RFID - the WiiU has this in the controller, but it is not compatible with current Skylanders). This does not require power, but the writing of the chip does. A real world example of this would be those ID cards (not the swipe kind) that you hold up to a reader that lets you enter doors at secure places.

Now how does this apply to the Lightcores? Well, the power provided through the base is enough that it can also power small LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) which are wired inside the figures to the spots that light up. If the light is required in a particularly small place, they can use a fiber optic cable and shine the light in one end and it will come out the other. In other words, shining light on it makes the whole piece light up due to the light bouncing around inside the clear plastic. You may have seen something similar to this at the circus, with those light up toys that are a bunch of fibers that light up. You can make them different colors by giving a small amount of color to the plastic before it is molded.

LEDs tend to last a very long time, and take a tiny amount of power. They make a most Christmas tree lights out of them these days. They give a consistent light, take very little power, have less of a risk of fire because they generate almost no heat (heat generated is related to the amount of power used, the heat is a byproduct of the fiber generating light), and last many, many times longer than normal bulbs.

Now unless it is defective, the light won't burn out over the lifetime of the figure. In other words, as long as you have interest in the game, and then some. Skylanders Giants will be a distant memory by the time most of them burn out. If it doesn't light up there could be many reasons. First if it is a 3DS, the portal doesn't stay on after it reads the figure in. If the portal isn't lit up, the figure won't be either. Other possible things that could happen is if you drop it or bend it in the wrong place, you might break the fiber optic (a fiber optic has to remain in one piece to use the refraction lighting it up. A wire in the figure may also have come loose. The LED may also have burnt out, it does happen even though most last years and years. Or, if the figure won't read, the chip inside that receives the power could be defective. The best solution in all of these cases is to call Activision. As I understand their customer support for Skylanders is very good and they have a good policy towards defect replacement. It simply is not worth the time and effort to try and fix it yourself.

As far as creating light up effects that are not already in the figure, you might want to look up Jin's excellent work on this forum. He has a whole site dedicated to customizing action figures. Word of warning though, creating a lightcore effect in a non lightcore will be a lot more difficult (if not impossible) than adding or moving lights in a figure that already has them. The chip in them simply may not have a good way to do it, and it will definitely require hollowing it out to run the wiring, and replacing certain areas with materials that can show light. If it already has lights, you can run wires off the existing ones, and it may (as in Hothead) have room for wires already. Hothead is one of the "easier" examples, as his model actually looks to have been designed originally to have light up hands. The hand fires can be illuminated (the material is the same as the head), and the channels for wires are already there.

could you say the first 2 paragraphs in english please? lawlz.

Very good post from defpally. I will favorite this page for future reference.