Anyone know where I can get a cheap 5/12vdc to 110vac converter (or how to build one with minimal parts)? Current rating will not be that high as it is to drive a backlight (el I believe)
Are you sure the backlight runs on 110VAC? If you mean 110VAC, like from a wall outlet try a converter from Walmart or Home Depot (car parts). I have seen them down to $12 there.
Not a "100%" sure, but that is what I have seen for the very limited amount of information I have for this display...guess I could just plug it in I also wanted to make this pcb mountable, so maybe an encapsulated module or something like that would be great. For testing purposes though, the "Walmart converter" would be a quick and cheap way of making sure that it works at 110vac.
If it's an EL backlight then you need indeed approx. 100VAC at a frequency of a couple 100Hz to about 1KHz (the higher the frequency the 'bluer' the light). I found a cheap one (4.06€) at Conrad Netherlands (search for article 184005-8A): EL-INVERTER WE-50 Article: 184005-8A Specs: Input voltage: 5VDC Output voltage: 60 to 100VAC Input current: 50mA Output frequency: 600Hz For driving EL foils from 30 to 105 cm² I bought two of them. One puts out about 68VAC, the second 79VAC, according to my Fluke 83 multimeter at about 1060Hz (not sure this is correct). If you're OK with an input voltage of 12VDC you could use those inverters delivered with EL wire (for case modding). If it's for backlighting of an LCD (only 5VDC available), Digikey have some too. Did some searching but couldn't find other stores in the US that carry EL-inverters... CD
Thanks Turbokeu. I might have an el wire inverter about somewhere I could use to test this display backlight. I would use digikey, but usually their prices are a little bit higher than I would want to pay for an inverter. I might try some surplus places here in US...allelectronics is pretty good for that sort of thing and cheap.
The inverter power is usually rated on the EL area it will drive, so with the cheap ones made for a length of wire YMMV.
"YMMV"? Didn't even think of that Is there any easy way to step-down a higher rated el driver (say from 400vac)? I can't remember the name of the company, but I know there are some that make a single ic (with few external compenents) el drivers in a smd package. However, the lowest rated voltage was 400vac if I recall correctly. I forgot that I had received a whole bunch of samples from them a while back, so will have to try and find them now
CCFL & EL inverters aren't the same output voltage or frequency, they just look similar. 400VAC sounds like CCFL.
Nope, definitely EL, as I had to "reverse engineer" an older LCD I had been trying to figure out a connection scheme for. There was a chip on the LCD I couldn't identify, and searching yielded the manufacturer made these chips for EL type backlights. If I find the link later, I will post.
O.K. Here is the manufacturer I was talking about. The company name is Durel, and here is a link the the spec data. http://www.rogerscorporation.com/durel/pdf/LIT-B9002A15.pdf Never mind... Took the LCD apart to find out it's a CCFL!
