Ive been doing lots of research on el wire. That harp is very cool Dilip. I found this article on a guy who made a midi controlled el wire setup
You are not allowed to view links.
Register or
LoginHe uses triacs to control the el wire, same as an SSR4. The triacs in an ssr4 are capable of controlling the the 120v 1500Hz voltage used to power el wire. The optocouplers in the ssr4 should keep the rest of the circuit safe from the wacky voltage. SO....
If there is any one else trying to use el wire you can do it two ways. Option one you can use a DC controller like the MR16 attached to transformers that power the el wire, for each wire (channel) you control you will have to have a separate transformer. Option 2 you can get one of the large ac frequency transformers, one of the one that powers 100-300 feet of el wire and use ssr4s (with out the dmx option). Instead of plugging the ssr4 into the wall (mains) use the output of the ac transformer to send power to the ssr4. Then the el wire attaches directly to the ssr4 channel outputs.
I have tested option 2 for short amounts of time ( a few minutes ) and it seemed to work fine but I don't have the el wire integrated in to my display yet so I don't know for sure if I will have any problems with it after running them for a few hours or days, hopefully the triacs can handle it with out heating up too much.
As far as I know neither option will let you dim the wires, the brightness of the wire is determined by the frequency of the voltage not the power. The guy who did the midi controller dimmed his wire by rapidly blinking the triacs on and off, im not sure this is possible with the current setup.