Adafruit LED Noodle

[Strategy]

Just saw this pop up in my social media feed. I'd messed with electroluminescent wire many years ago, but this product seems a bit different.
Anyone thinking of trying this in a project for something exotic in a build?

https://www.adafruit.com/product/5509

[ElectricDruid]

Nice! I wonder how tight you can make them curve? I quite fancy the idea of a pedal with a "neon sign" style title on it. You could get some kind of weird 1950's-diner groove with it.

[Strategy]

I had a really similar thought ElectricDruid! Inspired by early Kraftwerk and their custom neon signs!
In the early 2000s I had an EL-wire sign for my solo project affixed to my laptop. It didn't really want to hold its shape. I'm scratching my head thinking about how to affix this. Maybe a very fine line of superglue in the form you want it to take, say laid flat against the frontpanel. (?) in youtube videos for the Adafruit product, the LED element looks very wiggly and supple, quite like a noodle and not elastic like a rubber band. Might be hard to create a very distinct shape without lots of care in installation.

[ElectricDruid]

Proper neon signs were held in place by little clips, weren't they? Although of course they weren't trying to spring out of shape...

Perhaps it would be possible to drill tiny holes in the panel underneath and use a loop of fine wire to hold the LED noodle in place. Then "all" you'd have to do is drill some spaced out holes along the path you wanted, and then tie it down with little wires. How do you fix the wires on the back? Dunno...knots maybe? Or a blob of glue?

[EBK]

Adafruit always has inspiring products, for sure.  Coincidentally, I have a package from them waiting for me at home.  No light up noodles in my order though.  Maybe next time I order, I will try one.

At the risk of hijacking the thread, I will share that I picked up one of these tiny power amp modules to play around with.

(guitar pick for scale)

[PRR]

....how to affix this. ...

Needle and thread?
https://youtu.be/hd_ARCSkhow?t=19

[Ripthorn]

I got a few of those as well. Fun little things.

Adafruit always has inspiring products, for sure.  Coincidentally, I have a package from them waiting for me at home.  No light up noodles in my order though.  Maybe next time I order, I will try one.

At the risk of hijacking the thread, I will share that I picked up one of these tiny power amp modules to play around with.

(guitar pick for scale)

[Strategy]

You know, I have considered doing fabric-encased pedal enclosures on my list of new decorating ideas to try...It would work if you sewed it all up prior to affixing the fabric 'cover' to the enclosure surface!

....how to affix this. ...

Needle and thread?
https://youtu.be/hd_ARCSkhow?t=19

[ElectricDruid]

....how to affix this. ...

Needle and thread?
https://youtu.be/hd_ARCSkhow?t=19

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking with the fine wires. Maybe thread is simpler than wire, and at least as strong, especially if it moves about at all. Probably the better option.

Edit: still not sure how tight the curves can be though. That bow has some *fairly* tight corners, but it's a big thing, so it's not like making lettering on a pedal. But that seems to be with EL wire, so it doesn't tell us much about what we can do with this new LED noodle, except in a conceptual way.

[Phend]

Would work great on a clear enclosure. Hum...maybe the HP1122.
I wonder if two would Fuzzzzzz?

[JustinFun]

Never mind all the talk of affixing them - what's the forward voltage? Let's get a pair of them in a Rat or a TS!

[JustinFun]

Never mind all the talk of affixing them - what's the forward voltage? Let's get a pair of them in a Rat or a TS!

(I know the serious answer is that with all these LEDs in series they won't clip at all, but don't spoil my fun...)

[Strategy]

In my enthusiasm for this I completely neglected to look for a datasheet on the noodle...and I had to poke around quite a bit to track it down. Digikey distributes Adafruit so the datasheets are posted there.
https://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Adafruit%20PDFs/5503_Web.pdf

And here's a guide page with some additional info
https://learn.adafruit.com/noods-uberguide

[Strategy]

OK, that data sheet contains very little actual data. But the Digikey product page has some technical specs
https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/adafruit-industries-llc/5503/16719282

[EBK]

I find myself wondering if that noodle can be made to vibrate like a very low frequency guitar string and be used with some LDRs to modulate an effect.  Alternatively, perhaps as a pendulum.  Cool visuals put to weird use. 

[ElectricDruid]

Never mind all the talk of affixing them - what's the forward voltage? Let's get a pair of them in a Rat or a TS!

(I know the serious answer is that with all these LEDs in series they won't clip at all, but don't spoil my fun...)

Nope, "Since the LEDs are in parallel, you only need 3V to light 'em up", from the datasheet Strategy posted. They suggest a 50mA current limit, so that many LEDs are going to eat some juice assuming we run them fairly bright.