Let me tell you a tale. 8 months and 18 days ago, on March 25, I was sent an email requesting a commissioned piece of electronic clothing similar to my DJ jacket for a musical performer to wear on stage. I mulled it over for a bit, and came up with the idea of a sound-reactive EL panel dimmer. Unlike most cheap `sound reactive` stuff that just bli
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nks to music, I wanted my dimmer to allow for a more appealing pulsating effect. EL panels are just like EL wire except instead of having a phosphorescent insulating tube wrapped around the inner wire in a coaxial pair, it has a sheet of the same material placed between two conductive sheets. They operate on the same principle: need 100V-ish AC input at EL wires, panels, and other materials don`t seem to be generally well understood by the sources provided to me by the internet. I couldn`t find any good sources explaining how to make a dimmer, so I set out into uncharted water to come up with my own solution. Almost two months after that email, I had created my first sound-reactive EL panel dimmer. While it was probably one of the most educational projects I`ve worked on, it was also the biggest disaster I`ve ever blogged about. The dimmer didn`t work very well. The panel wasn`t getting bright enough. I decided not to mail the dimmer to my client and instead try to figure out how to improve it (note the FAQ where it says that I don`t work well with deadlines). Since then, I`ve been writing a ton of posts detailing my experiments with EL wire: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Well, I think I FINALLY HAVE IT! Okay, it`s not perfect. There were numerous ugly reworks required to make this work, and it still has some room for improvement, but as a proof of concept, it is totally done. I will probably only need one more short blog post after...
This project fits more for custom made battery casing that can have more space to hide things inside. This switch with few alterations can be used for any other project as well but is designed based on e-bike needs! This project use a clever functionality of....
The circuit described here uses ultrasonic oscillations and operates based on the propagation velocity of these oscillations in the air. Thus, we can easily determine the distance of two points if the time within which the wave travels this distance is....
Sometimes the precious metals are hidden too deep and are not detected except with complicated devices. In many cases, however, small pieces of precious metal buried near the surface can be detected by relatively simple means. Everyone is very attractive to....
Many times for various reasons we forget or can not water the plants that we have in our homes. And many humidity sensors units just notify us with a beeping sound or with a flashing light, that the pot needs watering. But what if we are away from home? This....
The principle behind a metal detector is really very simple. Proof of this is the circuit that follows, in which it proves that the construction of a metal detector can be done in the minute, with few components that we find very easily everywhere. With the....
The sub-harmonic bass generator is a sound producing unit for guitars. The sound it produces looks very much like that of the bass guitar. The octave generator is sometimes quite unusual since it does not produce any of the usual ways of coloring the sound,....
In the past the sounding (sea bottom measurement) was done with the "bullet", that is, with a heavy lead object that the seamen plucked into the sea hung from a calibrated rope. As soon as the "bullet" reached the bottom, the depth appeared directly from the....
This Amplifier was designed to have the following specifications: Distortion less than 0.1% at full power of 100W even at 20KHz. Power has to be attributed to an extended bandwidth. The output transistors must be protected against short circuits. The power....
A series of LEDs serve to alert the gardener when plants need water. Using two conventional digital integrated LEDs and a series of LEDs, we make a very useful device for gardening. The device detects the amount of water in the pot and alerts the grower.....
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