[dorkbotsea-blabber] Anyone worked with EL-wire inverters and Triacs?

[Zot]

I have some EL-Wire and the small invert from cool neon:

http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.ACCT88394/it.A/id.804/.f

I could not get it to work with a Z0103MA 1AA2 Triac.  I tried a simple
circuit using the battery from the inverter to drive the gate voltage,
but it would not turn the triac on.

I assumed I was having some ground problems so I bought a NTE3048 from
Fry's.

This is an optisolator and triac in a 6 pin dip.  Now I can turn it on,
but when I remove the gate voltage, it appears the holding current from
the inverter is keeping the triac open.

I do not have a scope to see if the inverter goes to 0 or not.  I am
assuming it does not cross 0, or stay there long enough for the triac to
shut down.

Does anyone have any hints to getting this to work?  I will likely need
a bigger inverter (and therefore different) but I am trying to test out
modules before I build the full project.

thanks!

Zot