The EL Escudo is an Arduino shield that drives EL wire.

Electroluminescent wire is a flexible cord that emits a florescent light. Some times referred to as ‘cool neon’ because the cord does not heat up. The problem is that EL wire runs on high voltage AC: about 125V at 425Hz. While EL wire requires very little power, you can’t use normal transistors to turn on/off a string of it. The EL Escudo uses TRIACs to control up to 8 channels.

Arduino Sparkfun EL Escudo Pinouts