Dimming an EL panel is harder than it looks

So, this is a project that was nearly a month in the making.  I set out to make a sound-reactive EL panel but found that driving EL in such a way is actually kind of difficult.  If you’ve been following the blog, I’ve been working on this project in one way or another since my transformers article, and it’s actually the reason I wrote that article.

Again, a disclaimer. There are over 8,000 words in this post that document all of my design decisions on this project.  It is not a how-to guide, but if you have some background in EE, I hope that you gain something from it.

Without further ado, let’s get down to business.

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Help

Hi, I’m hoping you’d be able to help me on a project I’m doing?

For a concert I’m attending, I really want to have a leather jacket that has LED lights going down both arms, and the spine. I’ve got absolutely no knowledge in wiring or anything to do with circuits, but if simple enough, I can learn.

I’ve found the LED light strips on EBay, the only problem with them, they’re not run by battery. If there is absolutely anyway you could explain how to make the lights battery powered, that a person with minimal knowledge could understand, I would be so greatful!

I would buy something similar to this: <link>

And put it down a jacket like this:

<link>

Cheers

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In Which I Begin to Lose My Mind

In my last post, I attempted to reverse engineer an EL wire power supply to see how it worked.  This brought up a few more questions that I decided to investigate, and the following investigation brought me to the brink of insanity and back.  I started to doubt the very consistency of space and time as time and time again my measurements seemed to prove what I knew should be impossible.

Seriously, ask any of my friends.  I haven’t been able to shut up about this all week. Continue reading

QFN24 with no middle pad

Did you ever figure out a solution for your padless QFN chip mentioned here?

https://ch00ftech.com/2010/09/16/flow-and-reflow-are-riding-in-a-boat/#more-467

I may be using the MPU-6150(http://invensense.com/mems/gyro/sixaxis.html) for a project soon and although it has a center pad, it specifically says not to solder it to the PCB. Fairly strange… I’m thinking a little *very* precise hobby knife and tape work might work but was wondering if you had found a solution already.

Also, you’re the guy that made the shot counter. Very cool project, I saw it posted on reddit a while back.

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