Driving Electroluminescent Wire With The Raspberry Pi

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elwirecraft.co.uk were kind enough to send some electroluminescent wire my way for general tinkering and electrical mishaps. I originally planned to try it out with Bare Conductive Paint, but had some amount of trouble getting this to work; the paint is quite highly resistive in thin traces, which doesn't bode well for the high-voltage, low-current A/C power supply that EL wire demands.

In the bundle of EL goodies, I had a sound-activated, battery powered, portable driver. Suffice to say, I decided to hack it and had somewhat of an adventure. I'm going to start with the end result, a video of the EL wire pulsating happily to the tune of a WiringPi softTone. Okay it doesn't make any sound, but the WiringPi softTone function is ideal for modulating the A/C.

If you're eager to learn more before I start chronicling my journey here, you can find a photo-journal of my hackery adventure on Flickr.

« Back to index Posted on 2013-03-31 by Philip Howard