After frying my EL inverter last week, I ordered more and focused on sewing the EL wire to my dress in the meantime. Once my new strand came, I had two strands and chose to sew them both to the dress as shown below. I will try to use both in the final product but that may require me ordering a third inverter so we will see.
I then tested my circuit with the new inverter but realized that the circuit I had was not supplying enough current because of the voltage reduction part of the circuit. I used a buck converter instead and was able to reduce the voltage and still have enough current. The video below demonstrates the circuit working with the arduino controlling the MOSFET switch with a blink command. The EL wire never really turns off, but at least I am able to control the brightness. Next week, I will test if I can run both strands of EL wire with one inverter and solder my final circuit to a breadboard PCB.
The dress with the LED’s look very nice. I am concerned, however, with how you mention that the EL wire never turns off. That would mean that your MOSFET is always on, which may or may not pose a threat heat wise (idk the exact specs of the EL wire and how much current it draws, so it may be fine). I would possibly look into the circuit and see if there is any thing you were unsure of for it, or you could message me and I can help you circuit wise (I used a similar transistor scheme for my Neon Sign).
The dress looks really good! I’m curious to see how you change the lights based on sensor input.
Hi Taylor, this is so exciting that it’s working and coming together! Good luck with implementing the two strands with another inverter!
The EL wire looks really cool on the dress!
You may want to think about putting your PCB board into a little box of some sort. It could be 3d printed or just recycled from a small container (something like an Altoids tin is nice). Then you can make a little pocket for it or otherwise attach it to an inconspicuous place on the dress.
You may also want to try to add some strain relief to the wires so they don’t come unsoldered as you move around. If you’re using a box for the electronics, you can use some blobs of hot glue in the holes the wires come out to make them a bit sturdier.