How To Work With EL Wire

December 7, 2010 by Mike Szczys 17 Comments

As you can see, [Phillip Torrone] has a nice start on his Tron costume for the movie premiere. Electroluminescent wire is what makes these costumes glow and if you’ve never worked with the stuff before you’re in for a treat. Adafruit posted a tutorial explaining how to work with EL wire. The process isn’t hard, but they’ve got a few nice tips, like using copper tape as a platform for soldering the corona wires. There is also a discussion of the math involved with properly powering your setup.

In this case, Adafruit is using ready-made power inverter units. If you’ve interested in hacking together your own inverter take a look at the background information from [Jeri Ellsworth].

Out Now: EL Coat, Coming Soon: EL Hat

August 10, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 41 Comments

[Render] says his coat is simply “enhanced with EL wire”, but we know the truth. He’s secretly an alien that can’t block out all of his glowing green skin with a the black coat. No? Fine,

You can put away the sewing machine, [Render] simply used a needle and fishing line to attach ~50-70 foot of electroluminescent wire to the outside of a coat he picked up at a local clothing shop. Solder and program in an inverter and controller board thanks to SparkFun, and you’re ready to go.

Just double check all your connections, high voltage directly on your person is not fun. Trust us.

LCD Backlight Repair

January 22, 2010 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

Another broken LCD TV came [Steve DiRaddo’s] way. This one had a broken backlight that he wanted to fix. He scrapped his LCD light table in order use the inverter. The two televisions were not the same size, nor made by the main manufacturer, but backlights all operate under the same principles. Using an inverter from a bit larger model meant it would have enough power to illuminate the lamps but he knew there’d be a problem with connectors and pinouts. After a bit of testing and creative wiring he got the system back up and running.

He’s got some extra parts left over from each TV including a bunch of CCFL lamps. Sound like it’s time to add some ground effects to his bike.

Broken TV Brought To Life In LEGO Body

October 31, 2009 by Mike Szczys 21 Comments

LEGO-monitor-frontbanner

After letting it sit around for about 3 years, [Blake] decided it was time to fix his broken 15″ television. A little trouble shooting showed the problem was with the inverter. The backlight would come on for a few seconds, off for a few seconds, then repeat. By freeing the Magnavox 15MF400T from its metal case he got it working again, but couldn’t find the source of the short. His solution: build a new case out of non-conductive material. Voilà! We have the 15″ LEGO monitor.

It’s not a very complicated LEGO build, but it’s the first case mod we’ve seen in a long time that isn’t strictly gratuitous. Join us after the break for more pictures. Continue reading “Broken TV Brought To Life In LEGO Body” →

Halloween Prop: Portable Black Light

October 2, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 6 Comments

blacklight

[Joshua] wrote in to show us this great Halloween tip. He wanted to take his 4 foot long black light along with him on Halloween. You can buy portable versions, but he realized he had enough parts laying around to slap together a portable one himself. He pulled the inverter from a scanner light and wired it up to a couple of 9 volt batteries. Knowing he would probably need a fresh set during the night, he actually wired in some extras with a switch to control which was powering the unit. We know this isn’t the best solution, but you could probably toss this together in just a few minutes.

Fiber Optic Flash Ring

October 21, 2007 by Will O'Brien 6 Comments

Ring lights that surround the lens are generally used for macro photography – they’re not cheap, but they’re one of the few ways to get shadowless photos. This fiber optic flash diffuser is based on the same ideas of this one. Rather than use a few large optic strands, [Joris] is using many, many more to decrease shadows as much as possible. His previous efforts are even more interesting. He built a LED version – with serial connected LEDs and a step up switching power supply to drive them. Then he moved on to cold cathode fluorescent before moving onto the fiber optics.