Day: November 29, 2006

Tesla Gone Wild

November 29, 2006 by 9 Comments


I’ve gotten quite a few good submissions lately, so don’t get mad if you’re not up. I can’t resist high voltages, so this Tesla coil project capable of 30 inch lightning bolts built by [PlasmaFire] caught my eye. Not too bad for a high school project.

From his description: The Tesla Coil that I built runs on normal house current (120VAC, 60Hz), fed through line filters to two Franceformer 9060 P-E neon sign transformers that output 9000 volts at 60ma each. After going through a high-voltage Terry-style RFI filter, the power is stored in a 4.0-joule capacitor bank. This energy is dumped into a copper-coil primary. The secondary, made from cast acrylic and motor winding wire, and a topload, made from dryer duct, aluminum foil tape, and a wood disc, complete the overall assembly.

(oh, and just for fun: the cylon roomba. Thanks [tod])

Design Challenge Prize Update Delta

November 29, 2006 by 12 Comments


OK guys, I can finally announce all of the prizes for the Hack-A-Day Design Challenge! I’ve been waiting to get things in hand before announcing them all – Everything’s arrived, and it’s a pretty sweet haul.

  1. Fabienne’s Hack-A-Day iPod Nano
  2. MAKE Controller
  3. MAKE Daisy mp3 player kit
  4. SUMO Omni Beanbag
  5. 120 LED Assortment Package

If you’re busy, maybe you just don’t know how sweet some of this stuff is.

Fabienne kindly consented to give up her very own Hack-A-Day engraved iPod nano. It’s been used and the inside thoroughly inspected, but it’s otherwise unmodded.

MAKE gave us one of their new open source MAKE controllers – I opened up the one they sent and it’s pretty sweet. The 55Mhz Atmel SAM7X CPU is on a daughter-board, and the main board has terminals for every connection you could want, along with USB, Ethernet, CAN, Serial… They also sent along one of their new Daisy MP3 player kits. Unlike the controller, this one has to be put together.

Andrew over at sumolounge.com hooked us up with one of their SUMO Omni bean bags. This thing is awesome. It’s the biggest bean bag I’ve ever seen. (I may have to buy the winner another one, my daughter has been going nuts over it )

Finally, [Alan] of Alan’s Electronic Projects sent us a set of his 120 LED assortments along with a handy resistor pack for using them with 5vdc to get things going. The set even includes some 13000mcd white LEDs for making your own portable tanning device.

How do you win all this sweet stuff? You send in a design! You’ve got until December 25th!