EL wire and speaker not getting along.

Using Arduino General Electronics
1

Hello everyone,

New to this forum, and to Arduino and electronics in general. I'm working on a school project and have an Arduino with a Music Instrument Shield. I wish to control a speaker and a length of EL wire with the Arduino, but I'm having trouble. When both the EL wire and the speaker are connected, the buzzing from the inverter for the EL wire gets very loud, while the output of the speaker gets very soft. The EL wire still lights up as desired, and the speaker still plays the correct tones, but the buzzing from the inverter is overpowering the speaker output. When the EL wire is disconnected, the speaker returns to playing at normal volume. When the speaker is disconnected, the buzzing from the EL wire inverter returns to normal. I'm hoping someone here has a suggestion for me to fix this.

Currently, everything is being powered by a standard 9 volt power supply. The speaker is powered directly by the 9 volt supply and receives the audio signal from the Music Instrument Shield, which is amplified through an amplifier circuit. The EL wire is powered by the 3.3V pin on the Arduino and is controlled through one of the Arduino's digital pins.

If anyone has any suggestions, that would be amazing. Thank you so much for your time.

Sorry if this is in the wrong section.

2

I can't really visualize this. Can you post a schematic?

3

Sure, thanks.

Sorry if it's unclear, only my second time using the program. The second image is the amplifier circuit schematic given to us. The power source is not a battery but a universal supply that plugs into the wall. The EL wire has an inverter on the PCB it came with.


4

The first thing I notice is that you have no supply decoupling anywhere.
You should use at least 47uF and 0.1uF across the supply. Batteries like that have a rubbish impedance and they need all the help they can get.
http://www.thebox.myzen.co.uk/Tutorial/De-coupling.html

5

Now I'm curious to see your code.

How to use this forum

6

On a 9V battery? I suspect it hasn't got enough amps to drive everything.

7

Understanding what EL wire actually is.. I should think that the inverter would be more of a load than the 3V3 supply might support.

Bob