Here’s one more use for the insanely handy LM555 chips. [Terry] put together a Tesla coil tuner around one. The 555 is used to generate a range of frequencies while a simple double LED arrangement indicates the presence of an output spike from a coil due to the resonance.
5 thoughts on “Tesla Coil Tuner”
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i approve of this post.
I approve of miked being beaten over the head repeatedly with a baseball bat.
First rule of the internet freyyr890, don’t feed the trolls.
i just want to say thank you to hack a day for getting back to real hacks. this is pretty sweet, i was starting to fear that his site had gone soft
Note for using this: A (pure) square wave is composed of summation of a fundamental frequency and every odd harmonic above that. Thus if you’re banging your coil at 100kHz with this unit (which generates a square wave), you are actually hitting it with a 300kHz, 500kHz, 700kHz, etc. signal as well. So if you get a strong response at a particular frequency, try dialing lower and see if you get a stronger one.