More EL Wire

W00! This is a test of the "angel hair" 1.2mm EL wire. I picked up a few short lengths of a few colors. This one's the "blue-green." I just ordered a bunch more, so I can try tacking it to my little-used lighter-weight motorcycle jacket. TRON Halloween, anyone?

Full EL Wire Notes are Online

My full, prescription-strength Project Notes about the Weekend of EL Wire are now online.

The Blinky Take-Out Box

Alright, so here's what I came up with. It's USB-attached, but only for power. Next step, make it read the serial port and do what a Processing app tells it. Meanwhile, it's happy to loop randomly.



The loop() is very simple. It flips a coin to decide whether or not to glow red, then waits between 0 and 1000 milliseconds. It flips a coin to decide whether or not to glow yellow, and then waits between 0 and 2000 milliseconds. Finally it picks a random number between 1 and 8, and blinks the green lights that many times.

Twenty-Four Hours of EL Wire

Now that I've got enough parts, and soldered the right ones to each other, I've got an Arduino controlling a few short lengths of EL Wire. I'll make a separate page for the complete saga, but the short story is this: I started with sparkfun's EL Escudo, soldered on header pins, used a transformer from coolight.com, used EL wire from a starter kit, soldered JST connectors on the EL wire, attached to USB for power.

I keep zapping myself, reminding me that, "volts hurt, amps kill."  It's surprising when it gets you, but it hasn't done any permanent damage.  :)

Trouble with the EL Wire starter kit

I got out the EL Wire starter kit, but it's not entirely compatible with anything else I've got. The transformer makes a squeely sound when it's switched on, and the connectors aren't something standard. So I got parts delivered last week, and more parts on order for this week. By next weekend I should have everything to power it and control it from an Arduino.