/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1085296
Hey m8, light autist here. I love lighty up shit and I have made a sign out of EL wire (pic related).

You will find there are different "versions" of EL, so do a little research on which is the brightest. I think Gen3 is the current version that's the brightest and lasts longest.

The battery box won't change the brightness it's just a limited source of power. My picture is on a plug in inverter. In my opinion EL wire is probably not the way you want to go to make a "neon-sign" trinket having done it myself. EL wire is somewhat expensive, limits your colors, doesn't last but 2-3 years at continuous use, is difficult to use if you want to animate segments, and the list goes on.

I'll show you a decent alternative in the next post.

>>1085626

This is side emitting fiber optic. It's illuminated by LEDs (either 5V or 12V). You can add LEDs to both sides to increase the brightness if you're running a long strand. The cable is cheap and readily available on ebay, the LEDs are pretty cheap and available on ebay, it's easy to make different color sections, it's easy to animate different sections, it's brighter than EL, you can mix colors to get a wide range of color combinations, you can use individually addressable 5V LEDs for full 256 color range, and it doesn't have that annoying high pitch whine that the inverter boxes for EL have (which isn't a hard fix). In my opinion side emitting fiber optic beats EL in all aspects except that EL wire will have an even brightness throughout the length of a wire. This is easily solved by adding another section of side emitting fiber optic.

So OP, from someone who has done both I recommend side emitting fiber optic. You should probably try both though because they really are two totally different lights, but LED is the way to go in my opinion.

>>1085626
>>1085643
Oh awesome, exactly the type of help I was looking for :D
Will order some side emitting fibre optic cable tonight, plus already have a few high power LED's lying around so should be fun.

Thanks again m8aroo

>>1085654

No worries. I would recommend ordering a length of side emitting fiber optic and some colors you may think you want. That way you get a feel for what the light is going to look like.

Do the same with EL wire. I'm pretty sure most vendors have sample kits with a variety of colors. That way you can view both types in the type of lighting and placement application to help you make up your mind. I'll tell you right now that making the sign is a lot of work. You don't want to do like 10-20 hours of making the sign to not like how the light looks.

t. light autist