Unboxed a new El Escudo, a strip of EL Wire, and an inverter from coolight (ifw-3294). It is my understanding, based upon my reading of user guide posted by sparkfun, that the DC terminals from the inverter are to be wired to the “RAW Voltage” JST connector on the El Escudo. The output of the inverter is to be wired to the other JST connector.
That seems fairly straight forward, if I got that wrong some one please correct me.
It also appears as though the voltage for the inverter can be applied by the Vin pin on the arduino main board. The specifications for the inverter states that it can accept an input of 3-5 volts. I should note that at this time I am power the arduino with the USB cable. If I connect the inverter DC terminals to the 3.3 V output of the arduino then I get the appropriate 125V AC out of the inverter accompanied by a high pitch whine. This whine becomes louder if I connect the 5 V output of the arduino to the inverter. During both these tests the output of the inverter was not connected to the El Escudo. Now using the fade sample code provided on the sparkfun El Escudo product page I would hope to see activated EL wire if I connect the EL Wire strip to output A and the output of the inverter to the HV input on the El Escudo.
Without the EL Wire connected and the code running the output on all of the JST pins (A-H) is ~62 V AC if I connect the 5V output to the VIN on the arduino. However, when the EL Wire (10 ft) IS connected, the JST pin on the connector reads in the mV AC range (Some sort of loading?) and the wire is not lit.
What I’m looking for is a detailed explanation of how to wire the the El Escudo to make this single wire fade in and out. Do I need to use a second power supply or will the output 3.3V or 5 V from the arduino board work to power the inverter? Any help or ideas on test to make this happen would be appreciated.
Cheers,
Brian
Inverter
http://www.coolight.com/product-p/ifw-3294.htm
EL Wire