Secret Messages On Plastic, Just Add Tesla Coil

Here’s a short research paper from 2013 that explains how to create “hydroglyphics”, or writing with selecting surface wetting. In it, an apparently normal-looking petri dish is t…

Cheap Musical Tesla Coil Put Through Its Paces

Once upon a time, musical Tesla coils were something you primarily saw at high-voltage hobby meets. They’ve become more popular in recent years, and now you can even buy cheap examples online…

Build Your Own Class-E Musical Tesla Coil

We’ve all seen a million videos online with singing Tesla coils doing their thang. [Zach Armstrong] wasn’t content to just watch, though. He went out and built one himself! Even better,…

A Single Transistor Solid State Tesla Coil

Tesla coils are one of those builds that capture the interest of almost anybody passing by. For the naïve constructor, they look simple enough, but they can be finicky beasts—beasts that can bite i…

Another Tesla Coil Starts

Everyone interested in electronics should build at least one Tesla coil. But be careful. Sure, the high voltage can be dangerous, but the urge to build lots of coils is even worse. [Learnelectronic…

No Acid: Open ICs With A Tesla Coil

We’ve taken ICs apart before, but if they are in an epoxy package, it requires some lab gear and a lot of safety. Typically, you’ll heat the part and use fuming nitric acid (nasty stuff…

Build A Tesla Coil With Just Three Components

Tesla coils are beautiful examples of high voltage hardware, throwing sparks and teaching us about all kinds of fancy phenomena. They can also be quite intimidating to build. [William Fraser], howe…

Supercon 2022: Samy Kamkar’s Glowing Breath

Sometimes the journey itself is the destination. This one started when [Samy] was 10 and his mom bought a computer. He logged on to IRC to talk with people about the X-Files and was WinNuked. Becau…

Tesla Coil Makes Sodium Plasma

Looking for a neat trick to do with your Tesla coil? [The Action Lab] uses his coil to make a metal plasma — in particular, sodium. You can see the results in the video below. To create a met…

Enjoy The Beauty Of Corona Discharge With This Kirlian Photography Setup

In our age of pervasive digital media, “pics or it didn’t happen” is a common enough cry that most of us will gladly snap a picture of pretty near anything to post online. So if y…

Junkbox Build Keeps Tesla Coils Perfectly Varnished

Admittedly, not a lot of people have a regular need to varnish coils. It’s mainly something that Tesla coil builders and other high-voltage experimenters are concerned with. But since that gr…

Hackaday Prize 2022: A Plasma Tweeter For Ultimate Clarity

In the world of audio there are a huge variety of esoteric technologies which are rarely seen. One such is the plasma tweeter, a type of loudspeaker which generates sound by modulating a small elec…

High Tech Pancake Tesla Coil Brings The Lightning

For several years now we’ve been following [Jay Bowles] as he brings high-voltage down to Earth on his Plasma Channel YouTube channel. From spark gaps made of bits of copper pipe to automotiv…

A Builders Guide For The Perfect Solid-State Tesla Coil

[Zach Armstrong] presents for your viewing pleasure a simple guide to building a solid-state Tesla coil. The design is based around a self-resonant setup using the UCC2742x gate driver IC, which is…

Is It A Plasma Tweeter Or A Singing Tesla Coil?

When our ears resolve spatial information, we do so at the higher treble frequencies rather than the bass. Thus when setting up your home cinema you can put the subwoofer almost anywhere, but the m…