This is a collaborative between a group of geeks with a shared interest in the practices surrounding DevOps practices related to continuous delivery. The goal is to create an internet connected device that can access the state of the deployment of an application from the “bare metal” provisioning of cloud VMs up through to the application build and deploy. It may end up as a limited edition.
Most control options and circuits involve creating an oscillation and running through a step transformer to get the 200V+ needed to get the wire to glow. One control approach like Spakfun’s SparkFun EL Escudo Dos have a single beefy low voltage power source and use high voltage triacs to route to multiple wires. I thought I’d like to get multiple 5V EL power supplies and use MOSFETs to control the low power side. Since I was going to experiment, I thought I start cheap and get the wearable versions. It turns out with some pocking around it was just as easy to hack the 3V controller without the use of a MOSFET.
I figured our that the small chip does two things. It debounces the pushbutton and based on how many times the pushbutton is pressed produces a couple of patterns. On, slow flash, fast flash and off. The pushbutton has an external pull resistor which makes the hack easy. Replace the pushbutton’s pull to ground with a microcontroller’s programmatic pull to ground. if both share a common ground this level shifting requires no other parts. There is some risk of oscillations and high voltage escaping back to the microcontroller but no more than the onboard controller chip.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
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Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!