OK have a sheet of EL sheet 6" * 4" with inverter sheet can be trimmed to different sizes - so I wanna do a lighted badge as a HD activity meter and a lighted panel behind some blue tinted acrylic and maybe something else but want to control each section independently? If an opto isolator isn't suitable for 70v and a few milliamps - is there an easy way to do it?
I'm no optoisolator buff but I doubt they can take 70V ac. I'd put the isolation before the invertor, not after it - and maybe use an optisolator followed by a transistor to isolate the hdd header from the invertor. Rob.
I've previously given some consideration to the problem you've stated. I was cooking up a VU meter made of EL sheet, or something equally fanciful. The inverter (for most designs I've looked at) needs to see some load to oscillate. I don't think you can just switch off the load without hosing the inverter (but again, designs to do that may exist--The one I looked at from ELCustomshop may be suitable for that kind of stunt--in fact, I bet it is since it's seemingly based on step-up rather than flyback). But I would maybe explore some way of switching stepped-down mains AC instead of using an inverter. In US, we have EL nightlights where the lamp just connects across the mains, no circuitry whatsoever. You'll have a little bit of a stepdown to do,and the frequency is not ideal but its workable, but then the triac optos like SteveyG mentions would be quite suitable (plus affordable).
