DIY “Staccato” controller drives Tesla coils

The Tesla coil, patented by legendary inventor Nikola Tesla in 1891, is a form of resonant transformer circuit able to producing sparks of high-voltage alternating-current electrical energy. They don’t have many sensible makes use of at the moment past novelty, however they have 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 may encode info by patterns of pulses, just like a wired telegraph. However these sparks are troublesome to regulate, which is why Mirko Pavleski designed this Arduino-based “staccato” controller for Tesla coils.

The aim of Pavleski’s machine is to achieve 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 a number of voltage to create a spark, however little or no present. That signifies that the whole energy wanted to provide a spark is minimal and comparatively protected to supervise with a microcontroller.

On this case, Pavleski used an Arduino Nano to handle the circuit. A management panel lets the consumer regulate the parameters, then the Arduino does the remainder. 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 normal triac, with a big capacitor offering some filtering. Nearly every thing else comes right down to the Arduino’s programming, which in the end determines the traits of the electrical energy provided to the Tesla coil. As a result of that’s going by a triac, the Arduino can “dim” the voltage, versus merely toggling it like a relay would.

This can let Pavleski carry out extra in-depth experiments with Tesla coils.