(Topic ID: 97834)

Lighting mod question...

By MoSeS_1592

9 years ago


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  • 14 posts
  • 7 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 9 years ago by Tmezel
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    #1 9 years ago

    I want to add some EL wire to my machine to enhance the GI. I found new stuff called 'Chasing EL wire' in which the lighting in the wire has somewhat of a candycane pattern that animates, almost as if fluid is moving through the wire...

    Anyways, my problem is that there is a tiny controller (with an IC) in the battery box (2 AA's at 3V). I don't want this to run on batteries in the machine so I purchased a 3V AC/DC wall wart converter. When I use this as the power source the controller doesn't work properly, it flickers off and on at random and is very unstable. I'm guessing it's because the DC power coming from the adapter is noisy and unfiltered, unlike the AA batteries. If this is the case, is there a way to stick a capacitor in the mix somewhere to clean up the power?

    From what I understand (and I may be very wrong) an unregulated power supply is simply a full-wave rectifier that converts the AC current to somewhat of a pulsing DC current, and I figure a capacitor could filter this if used properly. My knowledge on how to do this is limited.

    Any advice? Does this sound correct or am I way off the mark here?

    -Brian

    #4 9 years ago

    There is no ID on the wall wart or the EL wire... I bought them from China cheap on ebay. Probably get what you pay for, and it's probably a piece of garbage. The adapter is 3V 1-amp. I attempted to set up the circuit outside the machine plugging directly into an AC outlet, so its not service outlet that is the problem.

    #10 9 years ago

    The meter reads 3.3V on the wall wart. Just to be clear the El wire came with a wire connector and battery harness (see photo). I thought, if anything, maybe voltage would be a bit too high if the EL wire uses a very small milli-amperage. I thought that those unregulated wall warts always tended to output a slightly higher-than-rated voltage unless the current draw was near what the wart was rated for. Strange though that it works perfect with the batteries. Anyone think that shorting (parallel) the circuit with a resistor (of unknown ohms) to draw more current would work?

    ELwire.jpgELwire.jpg
    #12 9 years ago

    Thats initially what I tried doing, I soldered the wall wart wires directly to the battery terminals in the battery pack. I'll check out the link you posted. Thanks!

    #13 9 years ago

    Well, for anyone interested I figured out a somewhat unusual workaround. I recently made a post in the mod-ing forum regarding using an Arduino Microcontroller to power coils in a ¾-sized pinball machine. I had bought a few extra generic controllers since they were cheap. The controllers are USB powered and I realized they have built-in voltage regulators for both a 5V and 3.3V (50mA) output. I tried connecting the +/- battery terminals of EL battery pack to the 3.3V/GND on the Arduino and it works perfectly!

    After some tweaking I ended up sticking a 5-Ohm resistor in the mix to drop the voltage a bit (so the brightness of the EL wire matches what the batteries output – not very scientific but it works for this application).

    Furthermore, with a spare TIP102 transistor and 2k-Ohm resistor I was able to wire the button leads on the battery pack to one of the Arduino I/O’s so it can simulate a button click through a few lines of code. Now I have the Arduino ‘click’ the button so the animation pattern of the wire changes every three minutes automatically.

    My original plan was to add the Chasing EL to my PinBot ramp and connect a mechanical switch to the visor so each time the visor opened the animation pattern of the wire would change. This could still easily be accomplished but I think I may just let the controller switch patterns every three minutes. Now I can just plug the controller into an AC/USB charger internally for power and problem solved!

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