Car Florescent light strip, converting to ac?

[JesterDEV]

I went to walmart today and bought one of those Car lighter florescent.. Strings(?). How would I go about converting it to AC? I was thinking about just cutting a plug of a extension cord, but I would think that would be to much electricity.

I could of course just extend the wire out to my truck, but I thought that was a bit trastic.

[Birdtales]

The lights run off 12VDC, your computer power supply puts out 12VDC on the yellow wire on each of the drive plugs. As long as the light strip doesn't draw to much current it should run the light.

[JesterDEV]

Well I just tryed a 12VDC adapter. I cut off the lighter part, spliced the ends and connected, pluged in the apdater and nothing. Does it need that control box on there or no? Maybe that's the problem. I dont really want to wire it to my computer, cause this is the third one I have gotton for my cabinet.

[HeadRusch]

Yeah, the box needs to be attached.  you can't just run power to the strip, you gotta run power to the box which sends power to the strip which lights it up.

[ErikRuud]

Those strips are known as glow-wire or electro-luminescent wire.

The control box is needed.

The control box sends the power to the wire as a a high frequency electric pulse.

Check out Glowire.com for more information.

[Smittydc]

actually, you can plug el-wire directly into your wall socket, but it won't be as bright, because of the frequency.

[MameFan]

And don't just hack any old power transformer brick that is around 12v to run it.  Most of those bricks are around 300 miliamps.   If use too small of a one the transformer will soon burn up (fire hazzard) and stop working.  Check the heat from the transformer and on the wire.  If its warm, get one with a higher amp rating like 800 or 1.2 amps.

Plugging directly into AC... while it may work (somewhat) not the best suggestion for novices!