[ad_1]
DIY “Staccato” controller drives Tesla coils
Arduino Group — March fifteenth, 2024
The Tesla coil, patented by legendary inventor Nikola Tesla in 1891, is a sort of resonant transformer circuit able to producing sparks of high-voltage alternating-current electrical energy. They don’t have many sensible makes use of right now past novelty, however they had been generally utilized in spark-gap radio transmitters within the early twentieth century. The sparks generated by a Tesla coil would emit sturdy bursts of radio waves and operators might encode data via patterns of pulses, much like a wired telegraph. However these sparks are troublesome to manage, which is why Mirko Pavleski designed this Arduino-based “staccato” controller for Tesla coils.
The aim of Pavleski’s machine is to realize higher management over a Tesla coil, with the objective of producing longer sparks with much less energy. It does so by offering very granular management over the size of every pulse, its depth, and the interval between pulses. A Tesla coil requires lots of voltage to create a spark, however little or no present. That signifies that the overall energy wanted to provide a spark is minimal and comparatively secure to supervise with a microcontroller.
On this case, Pavleski used an Arduino Nano to handle the circuit. A management panel lets the consumer modify the parameters, then the Arduino does the remaining. Energy is available in from mains by way of a 12V transformer and the Arduino controls the present going from that to the Tesla coil with a regular triac, with a big capacitor offering some filtering. Virtually every part else comes all the way down to the Arduino’s programming, which finally determines the traits of the electrical energy provided to the Tesla coil. As a result of that’s going via a triac, the Arduino can “dim” the voltage, versus merely toggling it like a relay would.
This may let Pavleski carry out extra in-depth experiments with Tesla coils.
You possibly can observe any responses to this entry via the RSS 2.0 feed.
You possibly can depart a response, or trackback from your individual website.
[ad_2]
Supply hyperlink
