Saturday, October 29, 2016

HV857 - Tiny EL Lamp driver (QY10 backlight)


This is a neat little electroluminescent (EL) driver board.  It uses the HV857 lamp driver IC and only 7 external parts.  The PCB board is only 12mm square, and it runs off of 1.8-5v DC.  It would run fine of a couple batteries.  It's not the brightest and don't expect it to light up a long strip of EL tape or anything. It works good for smaller LCD backlights and such.

PC board layout if you want to make your own!  Also, here's a mouser parts list if anyone is interested.  Also also, here's the eagle files I made for this project.


Guts of my QY10 with the EL board installed

QY10 backlight action.  Yay!

7 comments:

  1. Awesome! I was just looking for this mod to implement on my QY10. I´ll like to have more detailed info about the actual EL assembly inside the LCD display, how did you do it? Did you have to crack open the LCD? Any pics? Thanks!!!

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    1. Hi! I don't have any detailed pics of the physical LCD mod, but I can walk you through it. You do have to open up the LCD display by bending those little metal tabs that hold it to the PCB. If you've never taken LCD's apart you may wont to practice on a junk one first. Once the LCD is apart you have to carefully peel of a foil backing from the back of the screen. I recommend a little goo gone to remove any sticky residue. After all the pieces are clean you can put it back together. The EL panel slides in the side of the LCD. Let me know if you have any questions.

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  2. Where did you get the EL panel from? Did you had to cut it down to size? (all EL panels I´ve come across online are 10cm x 10cm squares)

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    1. Yea I did have to cut it to fit. I think I actually ended up using EL tape and snipped off just what I needed. Kind of a waste because the tape is 100cm, but worked for this application.

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  3. have you done any tests to see what kind of wattage it draws?

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