Try talking to Shiva Vista or the Lotus girls. They both use computer controlled sequensing for other purposes (propane triggers) but the back end should be the same...

I think your best way of getting an easy-to-use control signal out of a computer is through the parallel port. The pins on the parallel port are at "TTL levels" meaning that they are around 0V if off, and 5V if high. You can control the individual pins through software. (If you are using a laptop that doesn't have a parallel port, I believe you can get an adapter that converts a USB port into a parallel port, like www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...tails.asp but I haven't actually tried this.)

You don't want to directly drive anything off of your parallel port - your computer cannot deliver much power to a load on one of those pins.

But, you can use a chip called a ULN2003 that lets a TTL-level signal drive a large load - or rather, lets up to 7 different signals drive 7 different loads. These chips are pretty cheap, you can get them at Fry's (or at least you can get a knock-off there) or order them online. I have only tried using this to drive LED arrays; since EL wire is AC you might need to do something a bit more clever to handle the positive and negative swings.

Check out the LED-Wiz:
groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php

It's designed to let you design LED light sequences controlled through your USB port.
There's even some software for it to be sound responsive.

I haven't looked at it closely, and I doubt it will power your El-wire wire directly, but it's worth looking at.

I like the PicAxe microcontroller (www.picaxe.co.uk), basically a simple computer-on-a-chip with a 'bootstrap' program that lets you write Basic programs on your PC and download them into permanent flash memory. Hook up the outputs to L401E3 triacs to switch the ground side of your EL wire. There are more powerful and versatile microcontrollers but PicAxe is cheap and easy (less cheap due to the weak $ though). A good way to get into it.
I use a free PCB program called FreePCB. Takes time to learn and $ to make boards but it's fun and worth it if you want to get serious.
Good luck and happy soldering!

Hi Chris and all,

Ok, depending on what you actually want to do and your target cost point, one can do various things.

Here's a guy who made a PIC microcontroller based EL Wire sequencer on the cheap, even provided the source code for the contoller:

See:
www.makezine.com/extras/13.html

There is a caveate' with the above, some EL AC inverters (the little box which whines and provides power for the EL Wire), use a different common voltage than that of the microcontrollers and won't work. People get around that problem by isolating the driver circuit from the AC inverter using optical-triac isolators and then switching the AC to the EL Wire. Experiment a little, find what works for you, inverters are so cheap who cares if you smoke one?

However if patterns aren't that important, you could track down those clear plastic five or six colored flashing LED glow sticks which people (like me stick in each hand & dance around) and use 'it' as the sequencer. In these things, you just pull out the LED and tap off the signal to your triacs which then switch the EL Wire inverter's 90 Volt outputs to the EL Wire. The glow stick can be had in the toy district of LA for 6 sticks in a bag for $5.

Or you can buy something canned for around $75.

Hope this helps?

Love - tron