i just bought 5 ft of StreetGlow El Neon String. i am planning on putting the wire under my keyboard keys to make them glow like ive seen in other peoples' mods. but what i want to know is... is there a way to make the wire light up without having to hook up the wire to an external power source? The wire's transformer thing needs 12 V DC and it converts it into 100 V (AC?). I will probably be using a USB keyboard (USB is 5 V? AC? DC?) Well i was thinking what if i were to get the same circuit thats in the transformer "flatten" it so it will fit in the keyboard and then perhaps make a circuit to convert the 5 V coming out of the USB keyboard into 12V DC. is it even possible? if anyone here has done it with the transformer out of the keyboard...how did you hook it up to a power source? thanks in advance.

I've been thinking about this through other threads and the like, but I'm pretty sure that it's impossible to make a transformer leach off the 5VDC that USB. I mean, if it were possible for the thing to run off 5V anyways, USB only allows 500 mA on a non powered hub (ie, the plugs on the back of the case).

So, in conclusion, I don't think it's possible to use just the standard wire. however, you can use LED's (which are considerably easier/smaller)

actually i just tried the wire on my 5v xbox controller and it works but its a little dim. but its running with the led on too.

http://www.virtual-hideout.net/guide...el/index.shtml is the link. And I was under the impression that EL only ran correctly at one voltage. And, i guess it doesn't draw that much current. Oh well

Duck,
That install is saaaweet.
Got any idea where to get those termnals in metal like in the example?

very sweet... might do something like that for myself. gotta get a new PSU first though.

thanks for the help those sites are gonna help me out a lot.