I’ve been working on a project that part of it is making an EL tape reactive to an ultrasonic sensor.
For that I’ve bought:
EL Tape - Blue/Green (1M) - COM-10795
EL Escudo Dos - COM-10878
2x EL Inverter - Battery Pack - COM-11222 (I bought two just to have a spare one)
I’m having problems because I think I’ve bought the wrong inverter, I tried connecting everything, the El tape to the El escudo dos, and the inverter into the El escudo through the AC port. After about a minute (I was testing codes on arduino already), the inverter just burned itself out. Is there anyway I could repair it? What about the spare inverter that I’ve bought, can I do anything so it becomes compatible with the El escudo and El tape?
It’s not clear to me that you’ve bought the wrong inverter. According to the data sheet for the tape, I’d expect a current draw of about 3 mA, certainly within the capabilities of the inverter. So I don’t know what went wrong. Could you post a diagram of how you had everything wired up and the code you were running when the inverter died ? Also e-mail SFE tech support and tell them what happened. Also ask for spec’s on that inverter; output voltage, frequency and max current and capacitance allowed.
And the code I was running is just an example code given by sparkfun at the El Escudo Dos page
Here it is:
// Test sketch for El Escudo Dos
// Turn each EL channel (A-H) on in sequence and repeat
// Mike Grusin, SparkFun Electronics
void setup() {
// The EL channels are on pins 2 through 9
// Initialize the pins as outputs
pinMode(2, OUTPUT); // channel A
pinMode(3, OUTPUT); // channel B
pinMode(4, OUTPUT); // channel C
pinMode(5, OUTPUT); // channel D
pinMode(6, OUTPUT); // channel E
pinMode(7, OUTPUT); // channel F
pinMode(8, OUTPUT); // channel G
pinMode(9, OUTPUT); // channel H
// We also have two status LEDs, pin 10 on the Escudo,
// and pin 13 on the Arduino itself
pinMode(10, OUTPUT);
pinMode(13, OUTPUT);
}
void loop()
{
int x,status;
// Step through all eight EL channels (pins 2 through 9)
for (x=2; x<=9; x++)
{
digitalWrite(x, HIGH); // turn the EL channel on
delay(100); // wait for 1/10 second
digitalWrite(x, LOW); // turn the EL channel off
digitalWrite(10, status); // blink both status LEDs
digitalWrite(13, status);
status = !status;
}
}
Everything looks fine to me. E-mail SFE tech support and see what they say. I might also ask them if this inverter can be run w/o a load, some can’t. IIRC SFE claims all their inverters are “no load safe” but who knows, perhaps they got fooled.
