Electroluminescent stuff

Factual Questions
1

Uh, oops… um, this is what I meant to post:

Hey, I was looking to do something cool with my computer case, and I came upon a kit that lets you make your own illuminated case badge (it’s that 1" square thing in front with the logo of whatever company made your computer). The price tag was in the ballpark of $25.

I was wondering… a 1" square of EL material can’t possibly cost $20 (estimating, along with the price of whatever else they give you in the kit). Does anybody know where I can get a small amount of EL stuff for a reasonable price? Or is that the actual reasonable price?

Also… how would I power it? Could I theoretically just take two leads from my computer power supply and solder it in, or would that be another one of those ideas that causes me to kill my computer power supplies?

2

Is it the Gamerz Badge Lite?
http://www.gamerzstuff.com/badgelite/index.html

It’s for sale here for $11.95. Maybe you just need to shop around a little?

For twelve bucks, I’d just buy the kit and not risk the computer’s power supply.

Detailed product review. This doesn’t sound to me like something that you can just cobble together using bobby pins and scotch tape, but YMMV.

3

I lost the link to what I was looking at, but what I had was a 1" square of electroluminescent stuff (Indiglo, as we may know it better) that lights up underneath a badge, making it light up perfectly evenly. I imagine it’d actually cost more htan an LED, though.

4

You can’t just connect EL material to the computer supply. They need high-voltage high-frequency power - typically 100V 400Hz or higher. The kit includes an inverter which generates this high voltage from 12V DC (or whatever the input is).