EL wire, or electroluminescent wire, is a flexible wire coated in phosphor. Apply the appropriate voltage and it lights up! Each EL wire looks a lot like a thin flexible neon tube and they come in many bright colors which can be driven pretty easily with an inverter. As this is a "chasing" EL wire you will see the glowing blue-green light seem to move across the length of itself as if it were flowing out the end, this feature provides you to add some really fantastic lighting effects to your next project!
This particular wire is 3m (almost 10 feet) in length, 2.3mm in diameter and is terminated with a 4-pin JST SMP connector. Each EL wire is also designed to be driven at 3.3V with an inverter. The connector works perfectly with the inverter and pigtail that have come out with this EL wire line, which can both be found in the Recommended Products section below.
If it requires power, you need to know how much, what all the pins do, and how to hook it up. You may need to reference datasheets, schematics, and know the ins and outs of electronics.
Skill Level: Rookie - You may be required to know a bit more about the component, such as orientation, or how to hook it up, in addition to power requirements. You will need to understand polarized components.
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Jehuty! Target bravo! (Anyone..?) This stuff looks pretty cool! Is there a way to control the rate of flow completely instead of "high medium low"?
This is a bit late, but you totally can! I used sparkfun's el escudo shield to individually address each channel. This means that if you use something like the el escudo shield it takes 3 channels per strand of chasing EL wire, which can be prohibitively many if you are trying to control a lot of things, but you then you do have total control over speed.