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Musical Tesla Coils Perform Zelda
heychris writes "You've gotta love the Chicago Tribune's story on Tesla Coil hobbyists from the first sentence. 'Under a starry Saturday sky behind a Lake Zurich warehouse, three men unload a small flamethrower, electric cabling, neon-tube "light sabers," about 80 pounds of chain mail and two 7-foot devices that look like monster-movie props.' So what does one do with 1.6 million volts and a Tesla coil or two? Play 110dB music, of course."
Thanks for knocking the LHC offline AGAIN!
I saw this in a hotel room in Nashville at Phreaknic. Or at least something very similar... loud as hell. Wicked cool though. Guy was running off of an mp3 player from what I understand.
Now that's taking concert pyrotechnics to a new level!
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
They have a similar setup every year at DragonCon in Atlanta during the "Mad Scientist's Ball". I've never actually been that that particular track due to some insane lines (queue up 2-3 hours early if you want to get into that one), but speaking to other attendees it's been pretty cool, and certainly is popular every year.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Neat! I reside in Gurnee (about 15 minutes north of Lake Zurich). Wish I would have heard about this happening!
There are likely only about 1,000 Tesla coil hobbyists worldwide.
There are quite a few more of us around as the Pupman mailing list http://www.pupman.com/ and the Geek Group http://www.thegeekgroup.org/ can attest.
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
Hasn't anyone seen this sort of thing before? Yeah, it's cool for maybe a couple minutes. But seriously, how the hell does this get to the front page of Slashdot?
I've seen a couple of these videos, and it really doesn't have the staying power of the flaming tuba.
Giga, not jigga.
"believe in my innocence and I might consider yours." -- charles bukowski "Scientific progress goes 'boink'?" -- Calvin
dupe
+5, Win
alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls
I guarantee they aren't using 1.6 MW of power.
On the other hand, Tesla coils are all about the voltage.
Why not play Tesla instead?
It's all good fun until you get that bill from your electric company... (Yes, I know it is very low current, hence not really that much power.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
is that you?
More to the point perhaps http://www.dr-zeus.com/ : ).
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
OOH I dunt know. I think both are quite fantastic.
It all starts at 0
It looks as though there is a stereo setup there? Or is it more to do with the frequencies or something?
Also , how do these sound in real life? Does the sound have a point source, or does it just envelope the listener becoming a whole part of the environment? What's the lowest/highest frequency they can produce? How Hifi are they?
And I could do without breathing in all that ozone...
Zelda played with atomic bombs?
Back in the 60's some hi fi company built tweeters working on a somewhat similar principle, called 'plasma tweeters'.
Rather than direct pulse width modulation of the coil at audio frequencies however, they use a 10Mhz or so carrier and pwm that. (A bit like a very high voltage class-d amp).
These plasma or ionic tweeters actually sound really good, as there is no diaphragm mass and so the transient response is amazing.
The only drawbacks are that they are complex, use a lot of power and make ozone while in operation. They were sold comercially with some success though.
Some guy has built one here:
http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/cwillis/tweeter.html
If they could get Jack White on board this could make for an interesting concert.
(I'm going to be a lameass and repost this that I wrote this seven years ago, when an "old busted TV" meant a CRT tube. For purposes of this discussion it still does)
You can easily make a Tesla coil if you have an old busted TV to rip apart. In general, the older and bigger the TV is, the better. And color TVs are better than black and white. This won't be a *great* Tesla coil, but it will throw a spark a few inches long and you can do all the standard Tesla coil tricks with it (St. Elmo's fire, etc.) without investing too much time or money.
Yank the flyback transformer out of the TV, and discard all its primary windings. Keep the big high voltage secondary winding (the one with the zillions of turns). It's usually encased in rubber and may look like a big rubber wheel. Its main lead has really thick insulation and connects to the side of the picture tube (where it looks like a stethoscope). The other lead (the ground) won't be as heavily insulated.
The only other parts you need are two NPN power transistors (2N3055), two 5W power resistors (20 ohm and 200 ohm), some wire, and a good supply of DC current (12-24 V). The circuit is a piece of cake. The first time I did it, I put the whole thing together with alligator clips.
This circuit has two primary windings around the flyback transformer core. The power winding is 8 turns, with a tap in the middle. The feedback winding is smaller (4 turns), also with a tap in the middle. The power winding leads connect to the collector leads on the transistors, with the center tap going to the +24 V DC power source. The feedback winding leads connect to the gate leads, with the center tap there going to +2-3 V DC (connect the resistors in series across the DC power to get the lower voltage in between). The emitter leads are grounded.
As current flows through one transistor, the changing field in the core induces a voltage in the feedback windings that turns that transistor off and the other one on. Then current flows the other way, and the same thing happens in reverse. So the circuit tunes itself to the proper frequency. But it also means that the first time you power it up you run a 50-50 chance of connecting the leads to the wrong transistor gates, in which case you get a stable DC circuit. So if it doesn't work the first time, try exchanging the gate leads.
This circuit is fairly well known, and doing a Google search for "flyback" and "Tesla" I found a schematic [aaroncake.net] for it right away. The guy mentions on that page that the transistors get really hot and he is not kidding- they do. Don't leave it running for more than a minute without a heat sink. The RF noise generated by Tesla coils is incredible, so expect to generate some interference. They make lots of smelly ozone. And if you let a spark go through paper, you can start a fire so be careful.
If you're lucky you can get 20-30 kV, which throws a purple spark a couple inches. (I only got about 4 kV out of mine- the spark was about a half inch long.) Pick up a neon bulb when you're at Radio Shack- these light up if they're around. If you touch one terminal of a fluorescent to ground then half of it will glow brightly between that end and the place you are holding it. The effect on a candle flame is interesting. Don't stick your bare finger near it because the spark does hurt if it hits unprotected skin. But if you hold a metal object and use that to touch it, you don't feel a thing (it's high frequency AC). Cool tricks include having sparks jump from the coil to a metal object in your hand, having sparks jump from a metal object in your other hand to ground (even a lousy ground), and having fluorescent tubes glow softly if you hold them in your other hand.
Imperial March
In addition to thegeekgroup.org and pupman, there is also 4hv.org. If interested, 4hv runs an IRC chatroom on the shadowworld network called #hvcomm
It's not a tuba it's a Sousaphone.
If I disagree with you it's because you are wrong.
that zelda one was uploaded on June 14, 2009...
you're getting slow in your old age taco!
And worse quality. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LudXCEZvn50
That would be awesome without the crowd noise. As is, meh.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Imagine if they had these at techno/dance clubs... They would have to be louder (and caged for safety), but damn thats awesome.
Flaming tuba can compete only because they linked a boring performance in the summary. Go watch their tesla coil version of the Imperial March. A perfect fit between instrument and song. :)
Original poster and taggers missed the obligatory Disaster Area reference.