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

[Wes Cherry]

I've done this w/ the same triac.

i've found it only works reliably with an inverter that has one of the  
output terminals internally connected to the ground input.

You want to switch the other high voltage output.

also don't forget a gate current limiting resistor -- you may have  
fried your triac by connecting it directly up to the battery.   your  
gate trigger current is 3mA, so assuming a 12V battery voltage, you  
want a slightly less than 4K resistor.

-W

On Dec 2, 2008, at 11:55 PM, Zot wrote:

> 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
>
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