Tested: A few weeks back, I wrote at length about LED strip lighting. Originally, that story had been about more than just LED’s—I’d wanted to cover the entire world of flexible lighting. Since addressable LED lighting proved to be more than enough glowing awesomeness for one article, I never got around to talking about another fun, affordable way to trick out virtually any project: EL wire.
7 comments:
Very impressive piece of tech, seems like a great alternative to LED tape and im sure something like this wire or the paneling would have been great option for the spring awakening chairs and letters. I am curious though as to the capabilities of creating effects within the wire and not just individual wires flashing on and off. Im sure they are allready developing or have developed an RGB version that just isnt available on the make or sparkfun website
This is super cool with what I'm sure is a large number of very cool theatrical uses. Evidently gets used in costumes a lot but beyond that I'm sure there is way more. It would be super cool to see this integrated into a set or something similar, especially if as Sean also suggests they develop a controllable RGB version. If you could make an entire set change color with the push of a button that would be very cool. It is also super cheap, on Amazon its 40 cents fro 10 ft seems fair to me. But more importantly it has a large number of awesome clothing and home uses that have to do decorating.
This stuff is so cool! I wish I had known about it for Rube, but whatever. I have always been looking for things like this. I was doing lighting for Pippin, and in the beginning, when the hands glow, the TD and I were stumped at how to make this happen. We tried lining the hats and gloves with LED's, but they have to be soldered together. LED strings can be hard to work with, and the super thin ones are expensive. In the end we used blacklight, but these lightstrings are basically exactly what I was looking for. I'll bet you in the next few years, these will become ever more popular in designs and projects.
I've known about EL wire for some time but the EL tape and EL panel are new to me and those open up even more possibilities for creative uses with the material. There have been countless projects where ive wanted to incorporate EL wire and for the majority of them I just didn't feel like waiting for it to ship but I have built a few gaming computers for people where I lined the crevices of the computer with the wire to make the inside of the computer glow.
EL wire looks very cool, and I can see a lot of uses for it in the world of stage theatre. Water prof lighting is always welcome, and the flexibility is also very helpful in a lot of small spaces or costumes that need to be flexible. I worked on a show back in high school that used EL wire to decorate some prop sci-fy guns. The effect was really powerful. It sounds pretty easy to use making me think that EL wire could be a great tool for props masters who want to have light in their props but want to leave the complex lighting to the electrics department.
EL wire sounds a lot like Neoflex, which has been around for a long time. The only difference is that Neoflex is an LED string that is diffused to as to not have any hotspots while the EL wire actually emits light along the entire length of the string. I do recall having heard about EL wire for quite a while, and I'm not surprised that companies are now introducing panels and tapes of the same conceptual design. It sounds a lot like Rosco's light pad. Seems like the only difference is the ability to order whatever color you want of the EL panels.
I have a few technical concerns. When using it in costumes it says that it needs a high voltage, high frequency power supply. Such a transformer would probably suck a lot of energy. Transformers aren't super efficient, so how heavy are these battery packs and how hot do the transformers get? If used on a costume, especially if we were to apply this to the theatre, how could we minimize the bits that we don't want the audience to see. Also, even if the stuff doesn't cost so much what about the electronics to back it up, like the batteries and the transformers? Also, are these things bright enough to even use on the stage? They seem to be relatively dim, and thus would probably get drowned out. Is there any danger to the actor of maybe electrocution if the thing happens to unplug? Lots of things worry me, but at the same time it seems like a really cool, inexpensive way to light things fairly well!
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