Tesla Coil Audio Redeux

So I’ve carried out further testing by removing a good portion of the bass present in the audio signal to great effect. I got Daft Punk’s Aerodynamic, and Axel F (original) and they both turned out pretty good.

Daft Punk – Aerodynamic

Axel F

Mini project – Vacuum tube retro

So I was browsing through Active Surplus (downtown Toronto on Queen St.) and saw (like any other trip there) these gigantic cardboard boxes full of vacuum tubes. Apparently they were $1 a piece, but I never asked before. I came home with 5 tubes and 5 matching sockets and went to home depot to buy a prime (read $2) piece of wood.

I drilled evenly spaced 1″ holes (just a hair under the size of the tube socket base) and mounted the sockets, then added ‘feet’ to give it more presence.

I plan to look up the datasheets on the tubes and find out the fillament voltages, with any luck they will all have matching filament voltages so I can power them all off a 6.3V or 12.6V power supply (perhaps just a LM317 set for an appropriate voltage) to get warm glowing tube goodness. A bench test with 6V and 12V shows that this does actually work.

Note for photographers: this was a super low light photo, I had to take 2 separate 15 second exposures at both 200 and 400 ISO and composite them to get a decent looking photo…. in real life the tubes are no where near as bright.

Audio Modulated Tesla Coil part 2!

So over the last few days I’ve been busting my balls getting the modulator complete, a few hours before midnight I met my personal deadline of plugging in the modulator board to the main circuit board. The result is a half-passable audio modulation. My future plan is to replace the entire mainboard with a PLL circuit, fullbridge, and current transformer feedback giving much better audio quality.

The modulator is a bit of a rats nest, I’d mount all the pots to a board and have fewer connectors, but I don’t have the ability to drill super-accurate holes into heavy steel (thus any board would be useless).

The plugin modulator board

There is also video! For anyone with time I’d suggest taking a look at my Youtube channel, I have more videos there, but for anyone that wants the quick sample, look below.

Note: audio quality has since been improved from the time of the filming as the enclosure was not closed (and therefore not shielded) at the time of filming.

Audio Modulated SSTC

So a project of mine that has been ‘in limbo’ for quite some time is finally starting to come to fruition. My intention is to convert my current SSTC to an audio modulated SSTC, I’ve already done up schematics for the modulator and receiver, and have acquired most of the parts needed.

Below you can see the first and second revisions of the modulator box’s front panel, since there is too much to cram onto one small panel, I’m going to have to use both sides, but on the whole it should be an efficient use of space.

I’ll post updates over the next 2-3 weeks (my winter break) as I make some progress on this, so stay tuned.

Oooh, pretty.

LED’s on their own are awesome. Lexan on their own are awesome. Combine the two and you have a quick fast arts & craft project for Christmas.

A piece of acrylic, LED, CR2302 battery, and some back poster board to line the back of the lexan for better contrast.

Note: first image – I attempted getting a green/red effect using 2 LED’s, however I couldn’t get the colours to stay in their respective pieces of acrylic…

Update!

Yet another gift… literally.