Thor’s Hammer Build Recognizes Its Master’s Hand

October 14, 2015 by Mike Szczys 52 Comments

Only those who have completely insulated themselves from modern pop culture will miss the meaning of a Mjolnir build. It is, of course, the mythical hammer wielded by Thor, and only Thor. It’s a question of being worthy; a question solved perfectly by this electromagnetic Mjolnir build.

Using an electromagnet is smart, right? Just plunk the thing down on something metal (that is itself super-heavy or well-anchored) and nobody will be able to pick it up. It starts to get more interesting when you add a fingerprint reader, allowing only Mjolnir’s Master to retrieve it from atop a manhole cover.

But for us the real genius in the build is that the hammer isn’t burning power from the four 12V batteries most of the time. All of the people in the video below could have picked up the hammer had they first nudged it off the metal plate with their foot. The build uses a capacitive touch-sensor to enable and disable the microwave over transformer used as the electromagnet. An engineering trick like this really separates the gods from the posers.

We hate to admit it, but this is probably a cooler build than the Telsa-Coil powered Mjolin that [Caleb] built a few years back. Still, his held up as the best for many years, and if you’re going to be displaced this really is a build worthy of the new title: coolest Mjolnir hack.

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EM Pulser Flings Washers, Side Effects May Include Curing Cancer Or Death

September 24, 2014 by Rich Bremer 57 Comments

Some folks believe that exposure to electromagnetic pulses helps the human body heal itself (one portion of the [Bob Beck] protocol). [Steffan] is one of those folks and was interested in EMP generation but wasn’t crazy about the several-hundred dollar price tag for professional units. As any determined DIYer would do, he set off to make his own.

This whole thing works by straight-out-of-the-wall 110v AC running through a couple 60 watt light bulbs before moving through a rudimentary rectifier circuit. The DC output from the rectifier charges five 130uF camera flash capacitors. An inductor coil is responsible for generating the EMP and is only separated from the capacitors by a single normally-open momentary switch. Although it is possible to wrap your own coil, [Steffan] decided to use an off the shelf 2.5mH unit normally used for speaker system crossovers. Once the momentary switch is pressed, the energy in the capacitors is discharged through the inductor coil and the EMP is created. To demonstrate that the pulser does indeed work, a metal washer was placed on the inductor coil and the unit fired resulting in the washer being thrown into the air.

[Stephan] did deviate from the some of the online designs he had researched, using 7 capacitors instead of the recommended 5. The result was a firecracker-like discharge sound and melting of the 14 gauge wire. Well, back to 5 caps.

Scavenging Ambient Electromagnetic Energy

July 11, 2011 by Mike Nathan 66 Comments

energy_harvesting_from_radio_waves

At this very moment, unseen radio waves are bouncing off almost everything that surrounds you. Emitted by everything from radio and TV stations to cell phone networks and satellites, these waves are full of unharnessed energy. That is, until now. Researchers at the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering have been working diligently to harness this unused energy, and recently unveiled their new antenna technology at the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Symposium.

The team, led by professor [Manos Tentzeris] has been working to develop ultra-wideband antennas to tap into the energy all around us. Using printers filled with a specially-formulated ink compound, they have been able to print these antennas on paper and polymer substrates. The antennas can harness energy stored in radio frequencies ranging from 100 MHz all the way up to 60 GHz, depending on the printing medium.

The team can currently power temperature sensors using television signals, and is preparing a demo in which they will power a microcontroller simply by holding it up in the air. The technology is still in its infancy, but the list of applications is almost endless. We doubt you’ll be powering your TV with this technology any time soon, but it definitely holds promise for things such as wireless sensor mesh networks and the like.

[Thanks, morganism]

Building An Electromagnetic Pendulum Clock

June 6, 2011 by Mike Nathan 9 Comments

[Stephen Hobley] has been experimenting with an electromagnetic pendulum in order to build himself a clock. Through the course of his experiments, he has learned quite a bit about how pendulums function as well as the best way to keep one moving without the need for chains and weights, which are typically associated with these sorts of clocks.

His first experiments involved driving a simple pendulum with a pulse motor. He discovered that the easiest way to keep the pendulum moving was to use a coil to detect when the it reached the equilibrium point, pushing it along by sending a small pulse to that same coil. He noticed that he could keep the pendulum moving at a pretty good tick if he triggered the magnetic coil every third pass, so he implemented an Arduino to keep count of passes and apply the appropriate force when needed.

He has been making pretty decent headway since his first experiments and now has nearly all of the clock works assembled. Crafted out of wood, he uses a 15-tooth primary drive ratchet, which powers two 60-tooth gears responsible for keeping track of seconds, as well as a pair of larger gears that track the minutes and hours.

It’s looking good so far, we can’t wait to see it when finished.

Stick around to see a quick video demonstration of the clock with all of its gearing in action.

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Build Your Own Magnetic Levitator

August 31, 2010 by Mike Szczys 34 Comments

Here’s a great magnetic levitator build. [Scott Harden] dug up the link after seeing that awesome rotating globe this morning. This version hangs objects below an electromagnet but it has a sensor system to provide a constant distance between magnet and object even if the payloads are a different weight. This is done with a couple of infrared sensors. One acts as a reference detector, always viewing an IR LED in order to get a baseline measurement. That measurement is compared to a second detector mounted slightly lower. The circuit adjusts the electromagnetic field, making sure the object is always breaking the lower beam but never interrupting the reference beam. No microcontroller needed, this is handled with a couple of OpAmps. See it in action after the break.

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Terminate RFID Tags

December 22, 2009 by Mike Szczys 49 Comments

This gun hunts only RFID tags.[mnt], who brought us laser gesture control, built this RFID Zapper but included so much more. Any good weapon has to sound mean, a feat he’s accomplished by incorporating an MP3 player into the rifle. The coil that zaps the RFID tag is powered by a photo-flash unit, but for visual feedback he’s got a second unit that flashes light to signal the demise of your German passport (see the video after the break).

It’s hard to believe we haven’t covered RFID Zappers yet. The concept came out of the Chaos Communication Congress a few years back. This method works by sending a very strong electromagnetic field through the RFID tag that causes it to burn out. There’s a wiki post on RFID Zappers but Firefox threw a certificate warning when we loaded it up; read at your own risk.

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Table For Electronic Dreams

May 29, 2009 by Caleb Kraft 7 Comments

table

The table for electronic dreams is an interactive table that is sensitive to electric activity. Though it looks similar to the table built by EMSL, this one lights up based on electromagnetic fields. You can get the schematics and such from the instructable, but there is also a video located at the bottom of the project’s home page. It would be really cool if the effect could be localized more.