mini-Tesla

[EMdevices]

Here's a video of the miniTesla doing wireless lighting.

EM

[hartiberlin]

Very nice video EM,
but you are holding the bulb with your hand,
so there is the capacitance of your body, where the RF can flow to.
Does it also light up this big, if you put the fl light bulb just aside the coil ?
How bright does it get, when you directly connect the upper coil wire to
one pin of the bulb ?
Many thanks.

[armagdn03]

Hi EM, you only can use shielded analog meters for these measurements, and yes be sure to use lots of chokes and caps as low pass filters before them and put them at least 3 Meters away from the Tesla coil, otherwise it will jamm the meters...
Good luck.

I very much have to disagree with this advice, chokes (mostly inductors) and caps will ruin your resonance. This means you will have to re adjust your resonant circuit, the addition of these items will destroy what it is you are trying to accomplish. A better idea, would be to figure out how you could build a resonant load, that was a harmonic of the generator, say a resonant motor, or light bulb (Tesla did resonant light bulbs).

Remember, if you strike a tuning fork in the vicinity of other tuned forks, the power multiplies. dont dampen the load, you wont read anything. Perhaps a new measuring system is in need.

[EMdevices]

Hi Stefan,  what's interesting is that my hand capacitance is really not playing that big a role as I thought.  I held the bulb with plastic material and it still lit up pretty good.  When I move my hand on one of the glass coils, it seems to attract the plasma just a bit more, but really I was surprised my body's capacitance did not play a bigger role.   Most of the energy seems to be close to the coil and that's where it lights up. 

I just managed to cut open the plastic bottom off this used neon (and I say used because it's a bit black inside an I replaced it since the lighting was fading from its original brightness)   and when I touched directly to the neon wires, it lit up pretty good.  Not quite as bright as in the previous pictures but pretty close.   (notice this new bulb is a 10 W type with fewer glass spirals, the other was 15 watts or so, and had more glass spirals)

Anyway, I though this was awesome to show.  Wireless lighting of bulbs due to intense RF fields was first shown by Tesla and it's so awe inspiring to see it.  Besides all these fun things, I'm really hoping to investigate if there is any power increase of sorts and try to optimize the coil.

EM

P.S.  I see what your saying armagdn03, and it could be like you say to a certain extent.  For example the capacitors that short the RF in the colpitts portion need to be high in capacitance else they detune.  I tried a choke in series with the battery and it worked quite nicely.    Everything needs to be done in a wise manner and it will work.  As I see it, the Input filter should be easy.  The output filter and converting to DC (which is what I want to do) is another matter.  I have gained some inspiration on how to match the load by looking how these compact florescent lights do it.  they don't connect the load across the whole output, but use a capacitor voltage divider and connect it across the smaller capacitor, so probably it sees 25 % of the full voltage.

[sanmankl]

Oba, another device to play. We need toys here for grown ups   
Good job EMdevices.

Fausto.

@EMDevice,

Excellent investigative work. I'd been put off by the hugh tesla coils. Yours just fits my bill.

So, how's the circuit board coming along? Any chance of sharing the cap and resistor values of your circuit? I need my "fix" i.e. make toys.... :-)

Cheers, cp