B-O-X

So this week I finished just under the wire. I made a sign out of EL wire to take to Buffalo Bandits games so that when the opposing team get a penalty, I can celebrate with some geeky flair. Here is the result:

B-O-X finished (click on this to watch the video)

Most of the work on this was attaching the EL wire to the piece of carpet that I bought at Home Depot. I did the layout in chalk and then attached the EL wire by stitching it with embroidery floss. This took several hours as I am not so skilled at hand stitching.  I then wired the EL wire to a cat-5 network cable which was used to power the lights.  This attaches to a box that has a 3 AA batteries, three AC inverters to power the EL wire and 3 switches (OK so it has four switches but one isn’t used because I had the crazy idea that I could light all three just by wiring another switch an powering all three. luckily I drew out the wiring diagram right before I started soldering and realized my blunder)(UPDATE 23Jan2012-16:14: So I realized in the shower this morning that I just need some diodes to allow the 4th switch to turn on all three letters in a way that doesn’t affect the other switches, I’ll update the circuit and post the schematic at some point).

I still need to wash off the chalk and cover the curly turns but I am calling it done and I will take care of these cosmetic things when I go to the Bandits game (I can’t make the game this week but I’ll be there on Feb 4).

Here are some pictures.

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *