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Cleveland, OH

I got an EL panel from Kitsch-bent.com to test out and show people what it's all about.

Here's what it comes with:
The panel with pre-soldered wires and shrink wrapping to prevent shock(the panel is as thin as light weight card-stock!).
The inverter board.
A lead to solder to your Game Boy.
And of course the polarizer and diffusion film.


It is the easiest thing I've ever used for backlighting.

Perfectly even lighting!

The two leads on the left that are the same length hook up to the panel. It doesn't matter which wire goes to which lead as it is AC.
On the right side the long lead is to hook up to the 5v and the short lead is ground. The wires literally just plug into the board. SO easy.

Just a general idea of how perfectly even the light looks even behind the LCD:

Quick little walkthrough on how I installed it:
Started with the basic prepping of the LCD, pealing off the films and cleaning it. The biggest difference is that you would want to leave those 2 little foam pieces behind the LCD to hold them in place. Just stick them to the back of the sheet.
I cut the bottom of the plastic frame to make room for the wires. It was a little tight.
I lead the wires from the panel through the capacitor hole:

I soldered it to the the cap on the front board but it was very noisy when no music was playing. Kitsch informed me that it should sound fine when hooking up right to the power board points on the bottom left corner of the main PCB:

I tucked the board in the bottom right corner:

A couple notes:
There is risk of electrical shock but it's not very strong. I have yet to shock myself but I'll probably do it on purpose so I can warn people how bad or mild it will be. wink

Also powering up the board without the EL panel plugged in can ruin the IC. I did this a few times and had absolutely no problems. But I still wouldn't recommend it.

I believe these should be out soon but I don't have the time frame right now. I'll get back to you all on that!

Now check these shots..
INCREDIBLE:

Last edited by thursdaycustoms (Mar 5, 2012 3:45 am)

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Wilmington,NC

Nice.

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reject of nintendoage

wow, looks great!

any info on colors and current draw?

justinthursday wrote:

Also powering up the board can ruin the IC. I did this a few times and had absolutely no problems. But I still wouldn't recommend it..

what do you mean exactly?

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matt's mind

(just for clarity)

"powering up the board {{ WITHOUT THE EL PANEL CONNECTED }} can ruin the IC"  (technically yes, I have yet to do this with the latest PCB revision despite trying very hard)

"I soldered it to the the cap on the front board but it was very noisy when no music was playing. Kitsch informed me that it should sound fine when hooking up right to the power board"  (the hookup points should be right from the power converter PCB.  there is always an electrical hum with EL tech, this will never go away (GBL, for example.  even watches with EL backlights have it hmm ). its isolated from the audio output through a prosound jack when its hooked up to the power board however)

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matt's mind

colors are white.  for the moment...  the way you change colors with EL tech is to just add a piece of colored plastic sheet over the light source.  the color film over theater lights.  you *can* adjust the wavelength of the light coming from the panel by changing elements of the AC, but its not enough to get anything near a spectrum of color.  its more like shifting blue-white light, to red-white light. 

so, sometime down the road I'll do sheets of color film, it'd be super easy to install after-the-fact.  some colors look like crap.  still working that out.  but, ftm, white.

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Cleveland, OH

Yes. Looks like a I missed a few things. Updating now!

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reject of nintendoage

ok, thanks for the info!

looking forward to seeing more of those

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San Diego

Any chance of doing a pre-order for these? Also, any idea of price range?

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matt's mind
Vile wrote:

Any chance of doing a pre-order for these? Also, any idea of price range?

no pre-orders (don't do them really).  i'm putting the kits together right now, i'm hoping to have them ready in a few days (along with the documentation, which i'm going to have ready when these go live rather than delayed like i always do, and always seem to piss someone off doing it)

the cost: not exactly sure.  i have to work it out again and recheck my numbers (and make sure prices for parts haven't changed a lot or something since I bought these).

edit:  also BIG THANKS to justinthursday for doing a review of them and a test run for me!  very grateful to him for the advice he's brought to the table on this...

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San Diego

Well, either way they look amazing and I'm already wanting a few for some projects I'm working on at the moment. wink  Can't wait till these are ready!

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Milwaukee, WI

Yep, I've been waiting to order a backlight until these hotties came out.  Excited!

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I think I've been waiting over 2 years for one of these.  Looks really nice.

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Cleveland, OH
Apeshit wrote:

I think I've been waiting over 2 years for one of these.

Me too! I'm glad it's in one of my own Game Boys now smile

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Ecuador

what happened to the pics?

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Cleveland, OH

Good now?

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Melbourne, Australia

I never thought we'd actually see these in kit form in the wild! Nicely done Kitsch!