EL Driver Shield

The EL Driver Shield will drive 8 channels of EL wire, generating required voltages on the shield itself. Each channel will support dimming individually.

Project Status

• 2011-10-05: Completed revision 1 schematic, passes checklist. Started board layout, got about 50% complete.
• 2011-10-04: Almost finished HV AC switching/control.
• 2011-10-03: Finished BOM/schematic for HV AC converter/inverter.
• 2011-10-02: Finished designing/simulating HV DC generator in LTSpice, put BOM and schematic for this section together.
• 2011-10-01: Many hours spent in LTSpice putting together a design for the HV DC generation.
• 2011-09-30: Started putting basic design ideas together.

Ideas / Brainstorming

• One single high voltage converter with separate switches for each channel
• Dimming using PWM via optoTRIAC on each channel, synced with the HV AC converter
• Shield will likely need a microcontroller on it
  • Inputs: 2x I2C address setting
  • Outputs: 1x HV DC converter sync pulse, 1x HV AC converter polarity signal, 8x optoTRIAC gate outputs
  • Bus: I2C, RS232