El Escudo - EL wire driver shield

The EL Escudo is an Arduino shield that drives EL wire. Electroluminescent wire is this really neat, flexible cord that emits a florescent light. Some times referred to as 'cool neon' because the cord does not heat up. The kicker is that EL wire runs on high voltage AC - about 125V at 425Hz. While EL wire requires very little power, you can't use normal transistors to turn on/off a string of it. So we created the EL Escudo that uses TRIACs to control up to 8 channels.

We also recommend using the Arduino Stackable Headers to provide enough clearance for the USB and Barrel Jack Connectors.