[Noisebridge-discuss] Connecting 128 EL-Wires to an Arduino

[Gregg Tavares]

Thanks Sean,

That's good advice. I'm really concerned about powering the el-wire. I'm
guessing I could easily have over 150 ft. I imagine having a backpack of
laptop batteries or something. Looking for ideas. Maybe I can cut my design
down to 64

On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 1:30 AM, Sean Cusack <sean.p.cusack at gmail.com>wrote:

> If you have any kind of space constraint or form factor considerations, I'd
> highly recommend using fewer, bigger inverters. I've made a costume that
> contains 70 feet of EL wire, and I drive it using 2 cool neon fish
> inverters <http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.ACCT88394/it.A/id.194/.f>*caution: works on 9-12V DC, not 5V!*. I used to use 3, but ended up bailing
> for the following reasons:
>
> 1) I couldn't route the wire to connect them all in parallel since it would
> have wrapped all around my body and tied me up. Therefore, I had to carry
> around 24 AA's in order for it to work.
>
> 2) The problem when you start adding more and more batteries is that you
> can never be sure if they are all at the same charge level. In other words,
> trying to get any kind of consistent brightness across strands is pretty
> much impossible.
>
> 3) Each driver puts off some noise. In a loud atmosphere, you'll never hear
> a few of them, but if you end up using a bunch...like 20, its probably going
> to start sounding like a deadly mosquito attack. Also, every driver gets
> hot. Since I carry these right next to my crotch...I started to...well...get
> uncomfortable (with 3 of them).
>
> Also, remember that EL wire brightness is derived from frequency*volts.
> Since you're sort of stuck on a pretty narrow range of frequency, you're
> going to have to bank on voltage. With only a 5V supply, you're stuff is
> only going to work in pitch black environments, or you'll be changing out
> batts every couple hours or so.
>
> Lastly, unless you want to do something really crazy, why not let someone
> else handle a section of the sequencing for you? You can probably get a fair
> amount of the way there by using this off-the-shelf sequencer, and then
> hacking it to go the rest of the way:
> http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.ACCT88394/it.A/id.192/.f
>
> Hope it helps -
> Sean
>
> On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 12:28 AM, Gregg Tavares <nbridge at greggman.com>wrote:
>
>> Hello Noisebrige,
>>
>> My name is Gregg Tavares. I'm new to the list. I hope can contribute more
>> than I take.
>>
>> I'm mostly a software engineer, not hardware so I'm looking for advice.
>>
>> I'm planning to build a el-wire display with 128 individually addressable
>> el-wires.  (yea, I know it's a ton of work)
>>
>> My current plan is an Arduino connected to 8 MCP23018 16-bit I/O expander
>> chips<http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/Devices.aspx?dDocName=en537375>connected in series with
>> 2 of these El Escudo boards
>> <http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=9259>on
>> each of those along with these ifw-3294 power inverters<http://www.coolight.com/product-p/ifw-3294.htm>
>>
>> It seems fairly straight forward. I'll take it a step at a time. If can
>> get 1 MCP23018 working with 2 El Escudo boards and 16 el-wires then it
>> should be pretty easy to chain in more of that combination to expand the
>> number of wires.
>>
>> The question I was hoping to ask is is there a better way? Should be
>> looking at different solutions? One big power inverter to power all the
>> el-wires? Some chip I'm unaware of that handle's more outputs?
>>
>> I'm grateful for any insight or advice you might have.
>>
>> thank you
>>
>> -gregg tavares
>>
>>
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>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>>
>>
>
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