What's new?

June 29, 2008  A big hiatus here due to cleaning up.  A few projects failed or didn't meet expectations and have inspired a failures page.  Still interesting stuff that I hope to get back to. Some press coverage of a film festival award to Discovery channel on the first video they did of my stuff.

May 25, 2008   Projects have come to a standstill as my shed was threatening to implode into a rather dark gravitational singularity. So I have obtained 40 plastic containers of 48 liter capacity (about 2 cubic feet) and have filled and labeled more than half. At least they stack the junk more efficiently.  Not that I have thrown anything useful away.  Did some LED light patterns.

May 5, 2008   I've fired up another HV supply from a Xenon lamp.  Also have colorful sparkler effects.  

April 15, 2008   I've made an unusual little high voltage device called a spiral line impulse generator. Read about the 1984 patent in the morning. Made it up, tested, photographed it and published an article on both my site and 4HV by the afternoon. My idea of a good productive day.

April 15, 2008   The high voltage antivirus got taken up by about 40 websites (eg Engadget ) and generated 40,000 hits.  The whole Tesladownunder site has now reached the million hit mark (thanks for helping).  I have some really complicated light patterns coming, like 'spirograph' type patterns. More soon.  Working on the SISG Tesla coil which will allow the coil to be run electronically rather than needing a spark gap.

April 5, 2008 I've made a rotating electrode for high voltage sparks on a smaller scale. Including an effect with a circle of sparks around a computer I've called high voltage antivirus.  Also other special effects producing a halo like effect around my head.

March 20, 2008 I've added orange vortex rings,  huge (26 inch) x-ray transformer arc, a smaller x-ray transformer, spinthariscope stuff, water resistor and upgraded MOT supply.

March 8, 2008 I've added stuff on the IR power in sunlight. More Franklin's bells stuff and some photos in the Blu-ray laser.

March 4, 2008 I've taken a great sequence of 14 pictures called Spider drama.  Intrigue, betrayal and resurrection - It's all there.  Made some Franklin's bells to get the feel for them at 80 kV and will look to making a more impressive model later.

March 3, 2008 I've remade my flyback HV supply due to an unfathomable fault.  Also opens the way for higher powers with bigger IGBT's, more powerful stages to take advantage of a high voltage tower I'm making. Have made 6 corona rings.  Expanded my wood burn fractals. It was put on Wikipedia.  Made a neat little HV voltmeter from a red LED meter to allow viewing my cap bank voltage from a distance in preparation of higher powers.

Feb 28, 2008 I've made a stabilized Bernoulli ball setup supporting 2 balls one of which has peacock feathers.  Will also levitate a steel gazing ball.

Feb 24, 2008 I've made a Blu-ray laser into a hand held unit. Nice violet colour that makes things fluoresce.

Feb 16, 2008 I've made a 12 kV supply from a microwave oven transformer. This should form the basis of a bigger supply that can charge my capacitor bank quickly and to higher powers. Now I need to have remote voltage monitoring so I don't have to stand next to the cap bank when it charges.  Videos on the site all seem to have gone down but I need more modern software to fix it.

Feb 2, 2008 I've filmed some  videos. About the homopolar motor, tearing a phone book in half and construction of simple HV. A test of my new Pinnacle video editing software version.  Sent demo DVD to the US.  Working on a homopolar motor made from a magnetron.

Jan 26, 2008 I've finally got something to motivate me. Currently having some preliminary discussions about doing a TV series which will involve hours of air time and is a big increase over my previous total of 20 mins on Discovery Channel. So it's out to the shed to work on a pilot show. I need new and dramatic effects which are smooth and well tested. So far, I have tripled the power of my MOT supply to run a Jacobs ladder, have arranged orange smoke for my vortex generator, made a minor special effect with a light globe and am working on a "signature" introduction to the show.  I have simplified the already simple HV for beginners so it can be assembled by a school kid in 1 minute. To make room, I have scrapped 12 microwave oven transformers that were taking up space and kept the best bits.

Jan 1, 2008 The Discovery Channel video aired in Canada just before Christmas (Session 4    5 mins). Since then I have been just doing minor repair stuff and thinking of the next big project. Lots of little ones on the go as well but still waiting for inspiration.

December 8, 2007 The Tesla inspired Christmas tree was filmed by Discovery Channel in a 6 hour shoot to get 65 minutes of video for a 3 - 4 minute article.  The Christmas tree resulted in 100,000 hits to my site in the week following and were featured on about 60 sites as well as getting to page 3 of the Metro paper in the UK.  

December 1, 2007 Completed the Tesla inspired Christmas tree. Will also be filmed by Discovery Channel soon.

November 21, 2007 Third Discovery Channel segment goes to air in Canada.  Video here Session 3 .  
 
November 18, 2007 Made a "skycam" with the camera supported 20 feet in the air on a rope between trees.  Should be able to take some interesting vertical perspective shots.  Picked up a couple of nice animated gif files that a Japanese site made of my photos on my Red Alert Tesla coil page.

November 15, 2007 Starting to plan my next project - a 20 foot Tesla Xmas tree.  I must get my videos sorted out on my site and all the new ones I have done.

November 12, 2007 The  Red Alert Tesla coil photo was a moderate success and appears on about 110 websites and I scored 30,000 hits.  I have a page in the December Maxim magazine. The smoke ring video is #1 YouTube Most linked All time in the "How to and Style" section.

November 2, 2007 I have finally got the Red Alert Tesla coil photo completed. It is a very complex setup with lots of things to go wrong and most things did.  Also did Jacobs Bi-ladder.

November 2, 2007 I have made a circular Jacob's ladder using a magnet with some nice concentric pinwheels of sparks.

October 29, 2007 I have made liquid oxygen and confirmed it is a blue colour and is attracted to a magnet.

October 27, 2007 I had about 40 people come to the Open Day and managed to run the big TC in gaps between the rain as well as demo lots of my other stuff. I have just heard that the third Discovery Channel video will air sometime.

October 24, 2007 I have repaired the big Tesla coil in time for my Open Day on 27th Oct.  Also busy getting my other displays functioning. If you are local (Bunbury WA), then email me if you want to come along.

October 12, 2007 I have expanded the Red Alert Tesla Page including construction of various models. My hoped for final shot didn't happen due to a few design problems and some nasty damage to my big TC secondary.  I have all the components of the final photo but not in the one shot.

October 4, 2007 I have opened a Red Alert Tesla Page named after the Command and Conquer series which was popular from 5 to 10 years ago.  I have been working on techniques to simulate a photo of the main Soviet defensive weapon, the Tesla coil in action. I have much of it done and am now working on cosmetic details before taking the final photo series. The effects shots in preparation look very impressive. Also have worked on the water bridge.

October 1, 2007 I have not been idle but I have been working on spectacular effects which I want to have well advanced before I post.  The weather is starting to clear and spring is nigh. I can get my TC out on occasions with less risk of rain.

September 15, 2007 The Discovery Channel segments went to air.  It came out a lot better than I expected and the pictures and editing were great.  See them yourself via links to the Discovery Channel site here.

September 9, 2007   I am aiming to revamp my links list of other interesting sites with commentary, ranking and photos to make it more relevant. My list of other sites that refer to me is up to about 700 now, about half of which are non-English sites.  Revamped my Tesla coil ARSG to run at 400 BPS and allow my series blown static gap to run at full airflow. Reached a record spark length of 11 feet tonight.

August 30, 2007 Made some multicoloured sparks today by changing filters during the exposure.  This makes Tesla coil sparks red, blue or yellow sequentially from a rotating color wheel.

August 28, 2007 The Daily Planet (Discovery Channel) will be playing the first of my 5 minute segments in Canada on Sept 4 and the second on Sept 11. ie next week. Title is (I think) "Australian Electricity 1 and 2".  Email me if you see it!
I did a display with a big TC at the Gravity Discovery Center in the Cosmology Gallery. Lots of big sparks and great for filming.  Was shot for the Discovery Channel as well.

August 20, 2007 I did a show at the University of WA outside the Physics Dept for their EXPO again this year.

August 13, 2007 I did a Tesla display complete with Faraday cage for a Hamfest where amateur radio enthusiasts sell and buy radio stuff. Took 15 hours including 500km travel and setup.  Currently working on a physically lighter big HV supply for my big TC.

July 20, 2007  Completed the Ferrofluid display for the Gravity Discovery Center and took some nice pics and a video.  Also gave the after dinner talk at the Tesla forum annual dinner for about 90 people.  

July 4, 2007  About 3 weeks ago I made a video to enter into a BMW ad for their new 1 series.  I was asked to enter this to be part of a group of inaugural videos of people doing intense ("1ntense") things. Two weeks ago, shot extra footage for the BMW ad, redid the story line and tightened things up to about 100 seconds.  More impressive effects which came out well with the new video camera.  6 foot sparks strike 3 inches from my nose so is pretty "1ntense".  Good news - the BMW video has been accepted and has gone on to the BMW site (click on Knck Out) with a YouTube link soon to follow.

July 2, 2007  Website stats:  1 Terrabyte of downloads of my site in the last 6 months. About 33,000 Google hits for "Tesladownunder".

June 25, 2007  Completed the variable flyback supply for the Physics Dept but the required specs have changed.

June 22, 2007  The Dalek cage has been featured on Digg to over 2000 Diggs (taking my total to almost 10,000). Lots of other sites have taken it up too and is chewing up lots of bandwidth (80 gig in 2 days).  I've also got some new ideas for a two cool effects in the one photo.  Should be something to knock up on a weekend and might be an even more popular.  Of course I can't tell you. Dealing with lots of email as well.  Also trying to make up a high voltage unit for the Physics Dept.  Then I've got to ... and all the rest.  Hectic stuff. Shame about the day job.

June 17, 2007  Also did a shot of me in the Dalek cage talking on a mobile phone.

June 10, 2007   I made a cage to allow me to get close to Tesla coil sparks - the Dalek cage because the shape is like one.   Also heard that the two Discovery Channel video segments have been completed and are ready to run in September.  Also the August shoot in the Cosmology Gallery looks like it is going ahead. Also worked on a HV supply 2kVAC at 30 - 100kHz into 160pf load as a separate project for the Physics Dept. And I fixed my sons guitar and guitar amp.  So busy weekend and haven't done much real work though.

June 1, 2007 Made a Tesla coil tuner to help tune my coils which vary with the size of the topload. Learned about Google PageRank. Mine is 5/10.

May 23, 2007  Did a comparison between neon and fluoro tubes.  I am lining up for a busy August with the Cosmology Galley shoot (as below), as well as the Physics Expo and a Hamfest with Tesla demos at all of these.  Also doing the invited talk at the Tesla forum dinner.  Lots to do for all of these events.

May 20, 2007  The video shot for Discovery Channel is in the process of editing into two 5 minute segments to be shown in September in Canada on the Daily Planet segment. They are also interested in shooting a big Eye of Sauron effect that I was planning for the Cosmology Gallery in August. I hope to span the width of the CG (which is probably about 40 - 50 feet). It should be dramatic. They are going to install a power socket to handle the 32A specially. I need to arrange some other WOW! type projects as well.  I have a few ideas.  I am starting work on a side project of a ferrofluid display particularly for young kids for the Gravity Discovery Center.

May 8, 2007  Ran the 18 inch coil again and was able to get better shots. The spark field stretches across the width of the shed plus the sea container. I now, finally, have a photo to replace the old one that was first on my index page for 3 years. Actually the sparks are no bigger but are more impressive. Also took photos of a red capped parrot in our garden. This is our town's emblem.

May 4, 2007  Did a little segment on a hand cranked generator running a Tesla coil (at very low power).

April 26, 2007 The video shot for Discovery Channel was completed. A very hectic 15 hours of constant activity. In total 3 hours of video in DigiBeta was shot by Dean Lomax.   A lot of stuff had to be done twice or more to do closeups and inserts. I'll have a writeup soon. Highlights were the best smoke rings I have seen, the pool stuff with sparks onto my head,  and cranking up the 18 inch TC to get 8 foot sparks.  Shooting on this last one started at 11pm. Thankfully I had warned the neighbours (if that helps).

April 20, 2007 The last 3 weeks have been busy.  I have started work on an upgrade to my 18 inch TC. I have a new HV supply which will comfortably handle a higher power. I have made the base and primary and have had preliminary runs giving 7 foot sparks. Not yet on my site.  I have been contacted by the Discovery Channel  to do a video shoot. Only 6 days to go and I am trying to get my gear organized. Much to do.

March 31, 2007  The video was completed and edited and has now had 20,000 hits on YouTube. The ending is good for a laugh.
I did some shots of TC sparks to my hand in the pool  which came out quite well. Looks dangerous but didn't feel a thing.  Also did some stuff with ionic spinners with the biggest one I know of at 14 feet diameter. Strangely, didn't work with the TC but did with a meager 60 kV DC.

March 16, 2007  The website Alexa says that this site has a been visited by 0.00135% of web users in the last 3 months. This should increase as most of my hits were in the last month.  Interestingly (for me) is that my hit counter was only set to measure hits to my index page. About 50% of traffic or more went directly to individual pages so I was considerably undercounting. So hits from the recent pictures now count for about 150,000 hits rather than the 75,000 the counter was showing for the last 8 weeks. I have fixed that and now all pages will be counted. 
Have done my third reshoot of the video with the TC on the car. Video editing is a new thing for me so still on the learning curve, but I want to get this right. 

March 5, 2007  There has been a huge response to the recent photos of Tesladownunder Car Theft Protection . and the "Eye of Sauron".  Again, lots of comments and links on hundreds of blogs and sites including Digg, humorous caption comments on Autoblog, Russian (with 377 comments), and Japanese sites. In total 50,000 website hits and perhaps 500,000 views in 4 weeks in Feb 2007.
I shot a fun video of this but ran into technical problems.  I might post it anyway or do a partial reshoot.
Also shot  "Expanding Eye of Sauron" and "In Sauron's Eye" as well which are quite nice.

February 15, 2007 I have had 15,000 hits in a week from that last pic which was featured on on Digg .  I have done a technically better photo "Aura of Sauron" which wasn't as popular and I keep having to explain why it isn't photoshopped.  I have just done Tesladownunder Car Theft Protection with a TC on top of a car and have posted it to some car forums.  Remarkably little interest in these pics from the usual Tesla forums and 4HV.  Surprising.

February 5, 2007 I have a great time lapse photo of a rotating breakout point: "The Eye of Sauron" and it has been shown on Hackaday and a variety of other forums such as Overclockers. Interestingly, I just saw the group Muse last night at Big Day Out and 8 hours later my site is mentioned on the Muse website forum.

January 27, 2007 I have taken photos of Australia Day fireworks.

January 20,  2007  I have taken pics of comet McNaught. My best one was published in the local paper. Also some UV stuff about UV through car windows.

December 24, 2006  I have added a small Tesla coil from microwave oven parts.  I have changed direction a little and am working back on PIC microprocessor controlled levitation that I stopped about 2 years ago.  There is a bit of a learning curve getting back into the microprocessor stuff.  Have just reached 900 photos (jpg's, thumbnailed).  Progress has been slow lately due to the day job.  I have got a trailer now and hope to arrange an overhead lift system so I can transport heavy transformers and stuff more readily.

December 6, 2006  I have added a bit about my home open day.  I added up all the separate "projects" that I have done and it comes to about 200 I have on the site.

November 24, 2006   I am planning a display of a lot of my stuff at an "open day" for the neighbours so spent a lot of time getting equipment up to shape.  Made a levitation setup using magnetic induction.  Also some more creatures on my hand including a 5 inch centipede and a 3 inch slug.

October 28, 2006   I have done a little project showing water flowing uphill on hot ratcheted surface.

October 21, 2006   I have taken some lightning photos. Made up a sparks for beginners project with only 3 components. Many hours were spent on trying to get a reasonable current meter for Tesla coil sparks. Some more astrophotography with my first pictures of a nebula.

October 8, 2006   I have done further work on LED's and how they fail.  Also a really nice plasma globe effect. Website has now hit 200 Meg with 840 photos.  Also another spooky cornstarch experiment with a subwoofer.

October 4, 2006   I have found an 80 kV high voltage project from last year that I didn't put on my site from last year.  Also obtained an old 50 kV supply.  Also continued work on high speed Tesla spark photography. Some astrophotography as well.

September 29, 2006  I have attended the Tesla exhibition from the Tesla Museum in Belgrade. Among a wealth of historical displays and models they had a small Tesla coil and the Egg of Columbus.  Also was able to pick up some old unwanted heavy high voltage and ultraviolet stuff from the physics department. I am working on a current meter for the high speed Tesla spark photography.

September 17, 2006  I have done more high speed Tesla spark photography showing streamers and also the polarity of each ring down. Made a new vortex ring launcher for the Physics Dept with some new features.

September 10, 2006  I have done some interesting high speed Tesla spark photography able to show details occurring at 1 microsecond resolution.

September 3, 2006  I have started a competition on the 4HV forum to make a Tesla coil using only the components of one microwave oven. I have put up US$ 50 as prize money but I am entering too so they have to beat me to get the money. I have started construction already and the competition closes Dec 1. 
I have also taken pictures of 3 inch sparks from one of my supplies looking at the structure of the spark and showing the variation in intensity along the 3 inches including areas where the spark vanishes. Also a nice picture of a "twenty-eight" parrot.

August 30, 2006  My new YAG laser blew the flashtube before I got pics of it firing, sadly. A 5 minute project was the incredibly easy homopolar motor that runs at 5000 RPM. Pics of the Uni Open day with the vortex generator being the star.

August 15, 2006  I have been busy with display preparation.  One of them has a rotating mirror that gives neat effects as a laser scanner. Also working on the laser galvanometer display with the Argon laser. Took a nice picture of a kangaroo and joey in our driveway. Also a nice macro of a gecko.

July 30, 2006  I have been tidying up stuff for my coming display at the Uni Expo. Took more shots of the vortex ring launcher and now have a commercial smoke generator which works much better.

July 22, 2006  I have had a fun day with the kids making a huge vortex ring launcher.  Yesterday made a solid state driver (SISG) and used it to run various high voltage stuff.

July 20, 2006  I have got my camera back. I have been able to capture an explosion of a coilgun coil when overdriven by 3 kJ. This is my first coilgun in a couple of years and used the big capacitor bank.

July 16, 2006  I have done some experiments in regard to ball lightning. I have created a vortex that travels at least 10 feet initiated by a spark from my capacitor bank. Now I need to light it up somehow.

July 9, 2006  I have setup the Argon laser with the mirror galvanometer and have dismantled an old large stroboscope.  I hope to try some flash photography with a low inductance and high speed setup for the flash allowing capture of very fast events.

July 6, 2006  I have done a static Tesla coil display and slideshow at the "Tesla" play and also at the conference the following day. I demonstrated some NIB magnets and how hard it was to push two south poles together. This demonstrated the force of just under 0.5 Tesla. I also had the magnetic array and gave free shocks from my candybox HV setup.

July 2, 2006  I have made a laser galvanometer from an old pen recorder. This inspired me to get out the proper laser mirror galvanometers that I got a long time ago and build a proper setup for 2 dimensional control. Lots of interesting patterns.

June 24, 2006   I have made a new secondary for the Physics Dept Tesla coil using much thicker PVC (Schedule 40) as the previous one had been flashing over internally.  I have now fitted the Maxwell Pulse cap to the Uni can crusher and have been testing it and measuring currents. Effortlessly cuts the can in half or propels it 15 feet into the air depending how you seat the can. 8 photos added to that section. For something different I tried magneforming some copper foil around my hand.  In regard to the Tesla play, I have had contact with Frank Tabbita and his technical support and am looking forward to meeting them soon. I will have a small static Tesla display at the conference (non-firing as no safety/insurance coverage).

June 20, 2006 I have just heard about the Tesla forum here in Western Australia.
Events planned for the Tesla's 150th anniversary include a one day Tesla conference on 7 July, unveiling a bust of Tesla 10 July and a one man play on Tesla with Frank Tabbita performed at the local Uni (the same one I made a TC for earlier this year).
I find it really strange that I hadn't heard of them before. 

June 17, 2006   It was smoky outside due to controlled burning last night so I took some shots with the  argon laser with interesting diffraction shadowing effects. I have a new camera lens that is a 180 mm that can take 1:1 macros. Here is a picture of a cricket close up. I have been trying to measure currents with exploding wires but have been having a few technical problems. One steel wool shot only seemed to be 20 kA with little reversal at 2.5 kJ so certainly could have gone a lot higher.  Did some repair and modification of my candybox HV supply in preparation for the Uni Expo in 2 months. Also am fitting a proper pulse cap to the Uni can crusher that I made for them out of defib caps.

June 10, 2006   I have made a battery from ECG electrodes.

June 5, 2006   Yikes, I had major problems with my links on my index page after my page reshuffle and spent a lot of time fixing them. Took apart a photocopier and got 2 small working HV supplies and a variety of other electro-mechanical bits

June 4, 2006   Finally have shrunk a coin convincingly.  Added a nice photo of an exploding iron wire with similar sparkles to steel wool.  I have sorted out my hit counter disappearance. I appears that when Nedstat became Webstats4U it added popups. Sneaky, not every time popups.  So my computer was dutifully blocking it. You should boycott Webstats4U for this reason. I have changed to Sitemeter which seems to work fine. Thanks to the blog here for that information.

June 3, 2006   I have extended the magnetic sensor array from 20 to 44 sensors and have put the better photos in. Also took about 200 pictures of high voltage arcs to water and published the best ones. Some really strange effects here. Currently about 1500 hits/day.

May 28, 2006  My hit counter is working everywhere else except my network. A bit frustrating. Added a Paypal donation button for a standard $10 and hope to give people some say in what I should pursue with it.  Added extra bandwidth to 80 gig . Would have been over my allocation without it. Have made  a magnetic sensor array which shows magnetic fields graphically and added the article with 7 photos. Have put in 20 of the 50 available sensors. Put it on the 4HV forum as a quiz to see what other people would do.

May 27, 2006  I have added measurements of the magnetic field on the big electromagnet with my voice coil force including the maths. Surprising result with how small the field is compared to a NIB magnet despite it seeming much larger. 

May 26, 2006  Now my hit counter is down and has been for 24 hours. Guess I might need to look for another one at least in the interim.

May 25, 2006 I have bravely tried Front page extensions.  Sure, I got the counter to work but lost all the formatting on my site and had to backtrack and reload everything. Currently having a lot of hits (4000 per day) from Dutch and Spanish sites as opposed to my usual 100 per day. Have used 32 gig server bandwidth out of 40 gig this month so may have to buy some more. 
Today I cranked up the big electromagnet with a bigger power supply that I converted from a big battery charger. Puts out 37 V 20 A comfortably (740 W). Entertaining for the kids trying to manipulate a wrench in that field. Used it to remagnetize an old bar magnet and have photos of the magnetic fields.
Did some testing of bismuth diamagnetism by checking the weight of a piece above a NIB magnet and in the big electromagnet.  Also made a voice coil on a lever to measure the field intensity since I don't think I will get a hall device capable of reading it.  Now have to work out the math.

May 24, 2006  This first entry to cover the last few weeks.
I have expanded the menu column links on the left side to avoid having so many sub pages and reduced some of the very long pages.
Also added the What's new? page that you are reading now.
New exploding wire photos (the last 4 in that section) using an inductor and 2.5 kJ showing the whole wire vaporizing and looks like two machines battling with energy weapons.
Radioactive stuff including a Tritium containing glowing key ring, Radium containing watch face and measurements of some mineral sands mined locally. 4 photos.
Levitating coil with total weight of 500g lifted. 8 photos.
Scorpion under UV light fluorescing bright blue. 5 photos.
Have added some Arty shots of night scenes in the new Nature Photo Gallery page. I like the "Hint of cows" (1 meg)  best.
Spooky cornstarch is really simple and strange stuff. I have to do a video to do it justice.  Ladies like this one because they "know" cornstarch.

Table below lists all the photos. Not sure if that is helpful but it gets generated automatically.

Tesla_Downunder