EL Paint

Certain of my friends are already jizzing themselves over this. Stop it you guys. I can hear you fapping from here.

"The LumiLor electroluminescent coating system is a patent-pending, practical, durable and affordable technology that can be illuminated with a simple electrical current. Used in conjunction with simple driver electronics, LumiLor will illuminate any surface brightly, and is capable of being custom-animated to flash in sequenced, strobed, and sound activated modes. LumiLor can be applied to practically any surface: metal, wood, fiberglass and plastics. LumiLor can be applied to any variety of shapes, including compound curves to form a truly conformal electroluminescent coating." Video.

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9 Responses:

  1. James says:

    Where are the power supply requirement specs?

    • tkil says:

      Where are the power supply requirement specs?

      Without direct experience with this particular product... My understanding is that most EL stuff takes high(ish) voltage at very low current.

      http://www.elwirepros.com/el-wire-info.html

      Indicates ~100V at ~1kHz, but also "hours on AA batteries"; at (say) 2400mAh * 1.5V = 3600mW per AA cell, that would imply about 200-300mW (130-200mA) draw. Not sure by how much the larger surface area would modify that.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroluminescence

      Shows a nightlight that draws 80mW for a 1960s-era 100mm^2 source, so the numbers above are not completely out of whack.

      • tkil says:

        a 1960s-era 100mm^2 source

        Gah. 59mm diameter -> 30mm radius -> 900mm^2 * pi -> 2800mm^2 == 28cm^2.

        Math is hard.

    • tkil says:

      Yet another data point:

      http://el-technik.de/Leuchtfolie/Technology.html

      A 10m EL strip with a luminous width of 6.5mm requires just 6W of power

      So 6W / ( 10m * 6.5mm ) = ~92W / m^2

      And they also suggest 110V and 400Hz.

      Given the examples in the original article, something like the bike helmet would be (roughly) a hemisphere shell of about 8cm radius, so the area would be 2 * pi * (8cm)^2 or about 0.040m^2. At 92W/m^2, that would require about 3.6W; that'd be a steep order for (say) 3x AA cells in series (1A draw), but bigger cells or other chemistries would find that a walk in the park. A single CR123 primary cell would drive that for at least an hour.

  2. DCDan says:

    Is this a hint that glow in the dark DNA Lounge laptop stickers are a coming soon?

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