A Beginner's Guide to El-Wire

[junglesmacks]

That's why you get a pre-done length of the wire

Just plug and play.. plug and play. If you can plug something into a wall outlet, you can work this.


Breathe.. breathe..

[theCryptofishist]

It's a light up tube, Ratty. Various thicknesses.
I got the Bikeglow from REI. two. Never even put them on my wheelchairs. Turned them on a couple of times and then they didn't work any more. Probably got separated from the battery packs in some sort of fatal way. I look on it as fifty wasted bucks. I've also seen a campmate fussing with his over the course of a couple of days, at least. At teh burn. I sort of look at all the electronic solutions as wastes of money. Stick with what works for you.

[Ano]

EL-wire sounds really awesome, and it looks really awesome, but holy hell, is it totally not awesome to work with, and expensive if you want to get quality EL-wire that won't die upon getting bent slightly. I feel like LED lighting is really the way to go, despite it's inability to make cool "outlines" on clothing, so to speak. I use EL-wire on my custom stuff that I wear to regionals, but I don't think I'll be bringing any back to the Playa, at least, not for awhile.

There are multiple "plug-n-play" kits out there. Coolneon lets you order them in lengths of up to 20 feet. Read up on their drivers and wires, and they'll have it for sale under the "instant gratification" tab. There's also the Amazon choice, where you can get 40 feet of separate 10ft lengths for various amazing prices... but only about 50% of those seem to survive the Playa, and 25% of them turn into a weird garbled half-lit mess because they get bent or because magic. Who the fuck knows.

Meanwhile, the chinese LED battery-powered lights I've had have lasted me two burns and multiple regionals/events, and now reside on my commuter bike that runs through the rain, dirt, and all sorts of adverse default conditions. And they don't eat up batteries like a motherfucker.

[trilobyte]

I think they're different kinds of solutions. EL wire was never the easiest or cheapest solution, but it's an interesting low power tech and something people have turned into an art form.

[junglesmacks]

Kinda like your mom.


Badum dum CHING

[Apprentice Dreamer]

So do you need a seperate battery & inverter for each colour/seperate strand of EL wire or can you wire a blue one to a red one to a white one to get differet patterns all on the same battery?

[junglesmacks]

Kinda like your mom.


Badum dum CHING

Uhh.. I think I may hitting the apple pie cocktail a little hard this night. This doesn't even make sense.

Christmas eve at 1AM. Yup.



Carry on..

[SnowBlind]

So do you need a seperate battery & inverter for each colour/seperate strand of EL wire or can you wire a blue one to a red one to a white one to get differet patterns all on the same battery?

You can run all the colors off the same inverter. You can daisy chain the different colors, or you can hook different strands up in parallel.