I've got a little EL wire project coming up. Unfortunately I'm not too savvy when it comes to electronics, but there's plenty of tutorials online to tell me what to do. I'm clear on most of what I'll need to have and know (inverter, sequencer, how to solder the EL wire…) but there's one small, silly detail I'm uncertain about.
I'll be wanting to connect a few runs of EL wire together, but not joined directly. They need to be connected with some regular wire to create some distance between them. I might also need to have some distance between some runs and the inverter/sequencer. Nothing too big, say 3 feet/1 metre at most. What wire is suitable for this? What sort of AWG? I've got some wire that I use for LED strips; would that be okay? Since EL wire draws low current, I'm guessing you can go pretty thin. The thinner the gauge, the better it would be since the wires should be as inconspicuous as possible.
Of course, we can simplify by calculating the new capacitance and reistance. Remember that capacitance increases in parallel and resistance decreases
Best Answer
Thin wire is fine. El-wire actually works as a giant capacitor which is why there's hardly any current flow. If you look at the ends of el wire, you'll see that the wires themselves are very thin. That's both the core and the outside wire. The thicker your connecting wire, the better off you'll be, but you should be able to go very thin, at least as thin as the actual conductors in el wire.