The next iteration of my Tron-esque human cladding:
I wore this to XMortis (a monthly goth event in Cambridge) (completely against the sub-theme, but whatever), however the inverter that I built was overheating and stopped working eventually. I had two inverters, so only part of the costume (the back) was working after that. And yes I could have all hooked it to one inverter but there’s still more EL wire to add. Next time I will have a more robust solution…
My notes from November on my customer inverter which sometimes fails (hey, I'm a software guy...):
Based on a schematic from Dr. Glowire, I made my own EL wire (aka Lightwire) driver, which is a DC-AC inverter. It converts DC from a battery to AC and steps up the voltage. First I prototyped it on a breadboard.
Then I recreated it on a PCB. Note I could have used a smaller 555 IC instead of a 556 since I’m only using half of it.
I wore this to XMortis (a monthly goth event in Cambridge) (completely against the sub-theme, but whatever), however the inverter that I built was overheating and stopped working eventually. I had two inverters, so only part of the costume (the back) was working after that. And yes I could have all hooked it to one inverter but there’s still more EL wire to add. Next time I will have a more robust solution…
My notes from November on my customer inverter which sometimes fails (hey, I'm a software guy...):
Based on a schematic from Dr. Glowire, I made my own EL wire (aka Lightwire) driver, which is a DC-AC inverter. It converts DC from a battery to AC and steps up the voltage. First I prototyped it on a breadboard.
Then I recreated it on a PCB. Note I could have used a smaller 555 IC instead of a 556 since I’m only using half of it.
I didn’t have the correct-sized project box so I cramed it into a free sample box. The battery box is separate (contains four AAAs). This certainly isn’t the most miniaturized EL inverter, but at least it fits in the vest pocket.
