Does 5v el wire exist?

MeDownYou · October 6, 2015

I was thinking about doing a few things with el wire after diving into the W-L's list once again.

Anyway i had the idea to connect the el wire via usb power, curious if this is possible as I noticed most appears to need 3v, 12v, or ac power.

or I can i just put in a little resistor in the cable to convert to 3v right?

d3sl91 · October 6, 2015

Your PSU does output 12V - any reason you don't want to just use a normal computer power supply?

Edit, here's a 12v inverter: http://www.adafruit.com/products/448

manikyath · October 6, 2015

you can add in a small circuit with an LM7803 chip to make a 3v signal out of "any" higher voltage.

W-L · October 6, 2015

I was thinking about doing a few things with el wire after diving into the W-L's list once again.

Anyway i had the idea to connect the el wire via usb power, curious if this is possible as I noticed most appears to need 3v, 12v, or ac power.

or I can i just put in a little resistor in the cable to convert to 3v right?

EL wire from what I've seen at least are all high voltage and high frequency to emit light similar to how cold cathode lights work but flexible. So they require an inverter to give it the correct power.

EDIT: There are portable inverters that use 2 AA batteries so if you were to mod it and direct connect it to a 3V or 5-6V source for the 4AA one it would work to power the EL lights:

http://www.adafruit.com/products/317

http://www.adafruit.com/products/564

Edited October 6, 2015 by W-L