SL: Yeah, spark gap tesla coils are much more powerful, but wayyyy too noisy for me
Nice coil though .
timelablasers, it is indeed a nice kit!
I have recently added computer control to it as well!
I looked into the circuit a bit, and it was actually amazingly simple to add it.
It uses an Arduino to control it, and the Arduino is controlled thru a VB app on my pc. The VB program has a single fire button, fire and stop buttons, and a BPS rate control.
Unfortunately the charging circuit (Stepup transformer) cant handle charging the caps fast enough for the high BPS rates, so the sparks drop in size and start sounding more like 50hz, and eventually blow the fuse. Not much I can do about that for now until I build a new converter that can handle more power.
The coil runs @ 400uS ontime, and the BPS is controlled by adding delays into my Arduino code. I have only gone to 250BPS for now as I was unsure if it'd work at all.
I plan to add audio modulation, though I need to find a program to convert something like a MIDI file into a bunch of BPS rates (Frequencies and breaks I guess), and feed them to the TC. Thats once I have figured out how to charge the caps faster.
Anyway, here's a video of it:
YouTube - Solid State Tesla Coil - Computer Control
And a weird lookin spark, which seems to be different when running on the uC instead of the internal circuitry. Maybe the ontime is lower than specified? Turns out the actual ontime is 200uS, not 400uS like described on the circuit diagram. I have accidentally run it at much higher ontimes, and ended up with quiet, firey arcs, but I'm not sure it's any good for the IGBT's so I avoid it.
Cheers,
Dan
