A guitar and amp? Pffft! Real men play their electric guitar using Tesla coils. Musician and engineer Nabzim decided to attach his electric guitar to a handmade solid state Tesla coil using an audio interrupter schematic.
I have no idea what that means, but it’s very cool. Nabzim was able to precisely control the sound of the coil by playing the instrument. In other words, all of the sound you hear is produced only by the sparks created by the Tesla coil, and not by the guitar being amplified.
The second video shows some larger sparks. Now I want to see him play on a huge Tesla coil in concert, with gigantic sparks flying everywhere.
There aren’t many cooler things than a tesla coil. What is cooler than seeing sparks of electricity fly out like tiny bolts of lightning? Nothing. It looks so damn cool. Even if it can be dangerous.
Destin of Smarter Every Day’s latest video is all about the fantastic assortment of tesla coils his neighbor Cameron Prince has in his collection. The pièce de résistance? A tesla coil gun. It looks like something out of an FPS when it’s fired, but it is completely real. They captured the gun firing at 28,000 fps so you can see all of the crazy details in glorious slow motion. And it is pretty much like watching lightning in slow motion, except that this lightning is coming from a gun.
Interestingly, you can get hit when the secondary coil arcs back at the shooter and the current is so low that it does not kill either Destin or Cameron. But still, don’t try this at home.
Tesla coils have been modified and used as musical instruments for quite some time now, but it looks like nowbody has thought of making a miniature version that people could place on their desks. tinyTesla is a crowdfunded gadget that achieves that.
When Nikola Tesla invented the Tesla coil generator around 1891, he surely didn’t think that a modified version of it would someday be used for creating music. Now, the name of this brilliant inventor is on many lips every single day, most of the times because of the Tesla electric vehicles, and on other occasions because Tesla coils get used for singing various themes.
In those clips, however, the singing Tesla coils are gigantic, and couldn’t possibly fit on a desk. tinyTesla isn’t anything like that. As even its name suggests, this gadget has small dimensions, fact that makes it more than adequate as an office accessory.
This miniature singing Tesla coil comes as a DIY kit, so anyone buying it either knows, or will have to learn a thing or two about electronics. For all means and purposes, this works exactly as a singing Tesla coil, in that it shoots sparks, plays MIDI tracks and puts your soldering skill to a test.
tinyTesla is currently featured on Kickstarter, where its manufacturer, oneTesla, tried (and succeeded) to raise the money needed for mass producing this miniature singing Tesla coil. The initial goal was of only $20K, and now, 8 days before the campaign’s end, that goal has been exceeded more than 12 times. Since the early bird spots are long gone, backers will have to pledge $149 or more to get a tinyTesla kit. There aren’t any doubts regarding the success of this campaign, so all backers should expect their tinyTesla kits in November, this year.
The ones who aren’t happy with how small tinyTesla is should take a look at oneTeslaTS, or how the developers like to call it, tinyTesla’s bigger brother. In case it wasn’t obvious already, oneTeslaTS is a bit pricier than its smaller counterpart, but the extra pledged money is equivalent to more fun.
There’s only one stretch goal left in this campaign, but I doubt that it will reach it in such a short time frame. At $400K, oneTesla plans to release a Bluetooth Tesla coil interrupter, something we’ll probably get to see at a later point.
Last year we checked out oneTesla’sDIY Tesla coil kit for electronics experts. The students-turned-entrepreneurs are now back with tinyTesla, a smaller DIY kit aimed at middle and high school students.
Aside from teaching children basic electronics skills and principles, the tinyTesla was designed to play music. It has a USB port and a MIDI port, so you can control it either through music software on your computer or with a MIDI instrument.
If you need to get the Nyan Cat theme out of your head, here’s the tinyTesla playing the popular circus song Entry of the Gladiators:
Pledge at least $149 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a tinyTesla DIY kit as a reward. There’s also a $349 pledge tier for the oneTesla TS, a bigger version of the tinyTesla.
Without his hammer, Thor is pretty much just an average guy. His Mjölnir gives him power and it seems like he’s just lost without it. If you thirst for power like that of Thor’s, then here’s a bit of good news: you can now make your own Mjölnir. You won’t suddenly develop god-like good looks or grow hulking muscles, but you will have a hammer that’s capable of emitting 80,000 volts of electricity at your disposal.
Behind the DIY Mjölnir are Caleb Kraft from Hackaday and Tesla coil expert Staci Elaan. The hammer was basically constructed by embedding a Tesla coil into a foam pop. At the push of a button, 80,000 volts of electricity are emitted and arc from the top of the hammer.
Kraft explains: “It will light up any fluorescent bulbs around, scare children, and leave the smell of ozone behind. It is super fun!”
It does sound like a lot of fun. But without the technical know-how or experience with working with Tesla coils, it could also be pretty dangerous. So with that said, don’t try this at home.
If Thor’s Mjolnir hammer wasn’t bad enough on its own, the heavyweight hammer is also capable of summoning lightning from the heavens. Caleb over at Hack A Day thought about this and decided he needed his own electrified Thor’s hammer.
Instead of standing in the middle of a field during a lightning storm, Caleb decided to go with something a bit safer. With the help of builder Staci Elaan, Caleb’s Mjolnir is outfitted with a working, battery-powered Tesla coil. Despite outputting 80,000 volts, the Tesla coil is actually quite safe – just zapping subjects with a tiny, tickly sensation, and not the full force of Thor’s mighty hammer. And since it’s a Tesla coil, it can even light up fluorescent bulbs placed near it.
That was fun, though I do wish the lightning bolts it emits would be a bit bigger. I guess you’d need a larger, plug-in Tesla coil – and Thor would probably have to wear a Faraday suit.
Check out more details on the build over on Hack A Day.
When someone says "The idea is extremely simple, a tiny tesla coil inside a fake hammer" we look up "simple in the dictionary just to check. This is Hack a day though, where simple can mean almost anything -- in this case a genuine electrified Mjölnir replica. All you need to make your own is the aforementioned tesla coil (you have one right?), some foam, a battery pack and, well... the ability to follow instructions. Fittingly, the first attempt at Thor's hammer went on a saga of its own, suffering damage at the hands of the delivery service en route to a studio. No bother for our resident hacksters though, who patched it back up in no time to the fully functioning -- if a little over-sized -- model you'll see in the video past the break.
Tesla coils are one of scientists’ go to tool for making science appealing to kids. As if producing your own lightning wasn’t enough, tesla coils can also be used to produce music by pulsing its sparks at appropriate frequencies. You can do all that and more with the oneTesla DIY kit. Although you might not like the “more” part.
The oneTesla was conceptualized by Bayley Wang, Heidi Baumgartner and Daniel Kramnik. All three are members of MITERS, a student-run tinkering shop at MIT. Which brings us to the catch of oneTesla: you have to build it yourself. Even the inventors admit that it’s best left to people with advanced skills in soldering and electronics. But that’s partly the point of the kit. I’m sure you’ll learn a lot about electronics even if you just watch or assist in assembling the oneTesla. And once it’s built, you can do this:
Flight of the Bumblebee or Attack of the Mosquitoes? The oneTesla has been such a hit at Kickstarter that its cheaper pledges have already sold out; as of this writing you’ll have to pledge at least $299 (USD) to reserve a unit, and you’ll have to wait until May to receive yours. I say it’s worth it.
I’ve seen some pretty awesomevideos involving Tesla coils over the years, but I have to say this is my new favorite. This video was captured at the recent Belfast Festival at Queens, Ireland, and it involves a couple of dudes going all Raiden on each other, firing bolts of electricity at one another.
Check out the epic electric battle in the video clip below. (Note, there’s a little NSFW language from the audience.)
Pretty awesome, eh? I’m just glad it didn’t start raining during the performance.
