Mood Machine

DRSSTC INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION

2009310

Mood Machine
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DRSSTC INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION

:
1. 2. 3. 4.(By Alan Cooper) 5. : (By Alan Cooper)

Mood Machine

:08/10/25 - 08/12/29) : (08/12/29 - 09/03/11) : (09/03/11 - 09/03/30) (By Alan Cooper) : (09/03/30 - 09/05/10) : (09/05/10 - 09/05/20)

DRSSTC INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION

:
Designing Interactions Bill moggridge The Law of Simplicity John Maeda ABOUT FACE 3The Essentials of Interaction Design Alan Cooper The Inmates Are Running The Asylum Alan Cooper Emotional Design:Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday ThingsDonald A. Norman . .

PC/

DRSSTC
(TheDoubleResonant SolidStateTeslaCoil)

DRSSTC
(TheDoubleResonant SolidStateTeslaCoil)

Mood Machine
DRSSTC INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION

Mood Machine
DRSSTC INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION

Mood Machine

DRSSTC INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION

DRSSTC

Musical Tesla Coils

created 6/19/07

In the past many Tesla coilers experimented with audio modulation of the output
sparks from their solid state (or vacuum tube) tesla coils. Solid state coils are particularly well suited to audio modulation because of the very high level of control over the operation of the tesla system. There are many ways of modulating a SSTC (solid state tesla coil), the 2 most popular being AM (amplitude modulation) and what i will call "PRF Modulation". PRF stands for pulse repitition frequency. The reason these 2 modulations exist, is because there are 2 (actually more) distinct types of SSTC. Those that can produce a continuous spark output (that is, a ame like plasma that exists at 100% duty cycle) and those that make what appear to be a continuous spark, but are rather producing sparks at several hundred times per second with a rest between each spark event. The rst (continuous) type of SSTC lends itself to audio modulation. Normally the output spark is a silent plasma ame. By modulating the amount of power put into the plasma ame, we can modulate the physical volume of the plasma. Modulating the size of the plasma will cause the expansion/relaxation of air surrounding the plasma, thus producing sound waves. These have actually been around for decades using vacuum tube drive. See this link for more details:
http://www.richieburnett.co.uk/cwsstc.html (

The other main type of modulating your SSTC is the PRF modulation. Normally, a tesla coil might produce sparks at exactly 120 times per second, or in the case of a SSTC, you can choose this frequency to be just about whatever you desire. So, why not make the coil play a low C at 130.8hz? Or, why not allow it to play the entire scale? The idea is simple really, re off sparks at a rate equal to the frequency of the musical note you want to play. The controls behind it is the tricky part. The remote control for my SSTCs could easily sweep a wide range of frequencies, but this isnt music yet, since its a continuous spread of frequencies as i turn the frequency knob up and down. But, using a micro controller, a program can be written to make this continuous frequency range into a discrete set of frequencies: musical notes as we know them. VIDEOS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X_NbBWvJZk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GlLO9rC0qU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVRvqhjtMWM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M3Kxh7BqHY

(there are others out there, but these are quick access you tube videos).

Mark 1: Get a micro controller to behave around the massive E-M eld of a tesla coil. Simple enough, stuff the micro in an aluminum box, power it from an isolated power supply (battery) and send its output optically, so there is no electrical connection from the micro controller to the world outside of its nice faraday shield. Mark 2: Program in a table of musical tones for the micro controller to spit out to the SSTC. The SSTC basically has a 1 bit input, which is either ON or OFF. Likewise, the coil is either producing a spark while this bit is a 1, or is "dead" while 0. These bits are sent out at a specic frequency, to produce sparks at that frequency. Each time the coil is "ON" a single spark is produced. That's right... if you left the output ON indenitely, you would only hear 1 pop, and then see a plasma ame produced from the coil (unless of course the thing just explodes from too much power). Ok, so set up an array in the software to have the timer's pick from a list of pre-programmed notes. Mark 3: Write a routine (in software) to play "music". Basically, pick a note to play, tell it how long it is to play that note, and then move on to the next note (or rest). This is a real brute force method, but allowed me to put a few sampler "songs" right into my control box without needing any external sources to supply the musical sequences. The problem is that 1) programming in complex music is extremely tedious, and 2) micro controllers don't usually have more than a few 10kB of program memory (so you run out of memory fast). But, on the plus side, this method allows me to set the tempo, volume and octave on the y (which can be heard in the videos). Mark 4: (current status of project) Connect a MIDI source to my control box. This MIDI source can be either an instrument with MIDI output or a computer. I bought a laptop, mostly motivated by this project. MIDI data is fed into the micro-controller's USART and decoded in software. Each MIDI note is stored in an array on the micro controller, it simply must play whatever note the MIDI instruction calls for. Pretty straight forward once all the supporting routines were programmed from before. Realizing that I have many SSTCs around (2 rather large ones, which can produce 12 foot sparks ant 6 foot sparks each) I decided to upgrade my control box with a secondary micro-controller, giving me the ability to control 2 SSTCs at the same time. They can either be run synchronously (where both coils receive the same ON/OFF commands) or can be run complimentary, where each coil is assigned 1 channel of MIDI data. I have currently reached this point in testing with 2 very small SSTCs and the results are exciting!
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For those who are curious, I am running atmel microcontrollers, in particular the ATmega16 (master) and ATmega88(slave). Below are some pictures of the control box so far:

The smaller box (located at the tesla coil) is simply a converter from the ber-optic signal to an actual electrical signal that my SSTCs all require standard.

New DRSSTC Driver

Having built a few DRSSTC drivers using IGBT bricks, I realized what a pain it was to build the large gate driver circuit I had previously developed. In search of something simpler, I turned back to our old friend the Gate Drive Transformer (GDT). I used to believe that it was not possible to drive large CM IGBT modules with a GDT, but I proved myself wrong. There are a few important details that must be done properly to get good results from a GDT drive. They are: Low leakage inductance GDT. This requires a pretty large ferrite toroid. Low impedance gate drive circuit using high quality ceramic decoupling and DC blocking capacitors. Make all long wiring coaxial (or at least twisted pair), particularly on the primary side of the GDT where the impedance is 2 or 4 times more critical (depending on half-bridge or full-bridge). Note, the original design (including PCB) have been modied. The les listed here reect these changes. Please see further down this page for the newer design les. http://www.stevehv.4hv.org/new_driver.html
pdf schematic of driver/controller EAGLE board le (right click, "save as") Top Component Placement (pdf) Bottom Component Placement (pdf)

This driver is very similar to my other ones, with a few important exceptions. The gate driver section is now very robust, using 16A P/N mosfet pairs. The input to the gate driver is set at 24VDC, so that a 1:1 GDT ratio can be used and still achieve 24V on the IGBT gate. I no longer believe its necessary to drive the gates to 30V unless you are absolutely pushing the IGBT to the extreme. Otherwise, the higher gate drive voltage just
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makes the possibility of gate oxide failure more likely. Even with 24V drive, TVS diodes should be placed right at the IGBT gate terminals to clamp the voltage to less than 30V. In order to support the new gate drive setup, some additional logic was required, and was provided with a quad AND gate. I also switched over to the 74HC74 D-Flip Flop instead of the 74HC109 JK ip op, because its 14 pins instead of 16. I also used some hacks to replace the 555 astable timer with just an RC on the input to an AND gate, in the overcurrent detection circuitry.
A picture of a completed driver

A picture of a completed controller

Another example of this driver in use can be seenhere(http://www.stevehv.4hv.org/ DR_plexi/). This coil uses a full-bridge of 40N60 mini-bricks from fairchild semi. The tank cap is a pair of special CDE caps, each rated 100nF at 8kVDC (estimated VAC rating of 2kV). The GDT was wound with cat-5e network wire, using the "white" conductors as the primaries (4 in parallel) and the other 4 wires as secondaries. A 5.1 ohm gate resistance is used, and is bypassed on the discharging edge with a 1n5819 diode. The primary is tuned low to 170khz. This coil is a solid performer producing up to 38" sparks with only an 11" long secondary winding.

A note on using ber optic receiver OPF2412:

This one seems to come back and haunt me from time to time. Im using the OPTEK OPF2412 ber optic receiver. These are noise sensitive devices, and not surprisingly, problems show up when I use them around tesla coils. Firstly, they really should be in a metal enclosure. Secondly (and quite surprisingly), the metal sheath that is at the end of the ST ber cable should be bonded to the metal box. It may seem absurd that a small piece of metal just a few millimeters from the lens of the Rx would be able to effect the thing, but surely enough it does. The issue is either that this metal ring picks up some RF and couples it into the Rx, or its simply that the metal ring, when grounded, extends the electrostatic shielding of the Rx. Im gonna go with number 2. Anyway, the x for me
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was to just put a small steel spring that presses against the box and the ST end when its plugged in. It may be wise to stick all of the low voltage electronics into a metal box too. One more odd problem discovered and solved!

UPDATE 11/23/2008
(some of this may not make sense as i have removed the original schematics):

There were a few quirks with this design that i wanted to correct. The RC circuit for the current limiter was fussy and hard to get working just how i wanted, also it turns out the difference between HCT and HC logic made a big difference in the circuit performance. So i present an updated schematic that is a much more robust design. Terry Blake gave me the inspiration for using the extra D ip op to set the "disabled" state of the controller. Operation is simple, when the comparator senses a trip condition, its output drops low, causing the D ip op to clear its output, which disables the interrupter pulse via the AND gate. The controller stays in the disabled state until a rising edge from the next interrupter pulse puts the D-FF back high. This also has the added benet of keeping the indicator LED ON for the maximum permissible amount of time (rather than just 1mS or something). Below is a updated schematic that documents the surgery necessary for my PCB design.

SCHEMATIC (PDF)7

 Also, the BOM is probably a tad outdated. Most of the important parts are there (all the ICs and caps) but it may be lacking a resistor or 2 or something like that. I suggest you check over the new schematic before trusting the BOM solely. Id also like to report that this driver is now used on my revised edition of the DRSSTC-0.5.(http://www.stevehv.4hv.org/DRSSTC.5.htm) It works great even at 300kHz! Truly a universal driver.

UPDATE 2/11/09:
I have re-spun the PCB for this driver. The main reason was that I wanted to put the ber optic receiver on the PCB, and also because i modied the over-current detection inhibit circuitry. Below are some helpful les for this new board. Another afterthought modication to this design deals with the current sensing circuitry. Having the burden resistance (R5) before the bridge rectier (D8-11) and having yet more burden resistance (R4) after the bridge, made it less than straight forward to pre-determine the volts-toamps scaling of the circuit. So now the burden resistance is moved to be only after the bridge rectier, and to handle the larger currents, I suggest using 1n5819 schottky diodes instead of the 1n4148 signal diodes. Furthermore, the somewhat large .1uF lter cap on the sensing input to the LM311 comparator was causing other scaling errors (its a signicantly low impedance at 100khz) so I've changed it to 1nF, or I nd it can be left off altogether. Schematic release 1.3 (pdf) Board le 1.3 (.brd) Top Component Placement (pdf) Bottom Component Placement (pdf) A mostly complete Parts List (.xls)

Welcome to WWW.DRSSTC.COM!

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+5V

+9V

1 VI VO GND
2 2

3 VI VO GND GND VO
2

1 VI

+24V

20VAC 1k R12
D16

2 1

B1

+5V

IC7 7805T POWER INDICATOR

IC6 7808T

IC5 7824T

C15 100u
+9V 1u

C16 330u GND IC8

8 10 2
VCC

C17 330u
C8

C18 330u

JP6 GND
+5V

+24V

GND

C12 D14 1N4148 R9 1k

IC2C
3 4 9

C2

.1u

GND
ENA INA GND INB OUTA VCC OUTB ENB

8 7 6 5

D5 1N4148

GND 74HC08 IC2D

3 11 1
7
GND

C1

.1u

FEEDBACK CT R1 IC1P 2
+5V
13

14

12

STB16PF06 Q3 .1u C9 C11 10u Q1 STB16NF06 C14 10u

R11 10

D1

D4

2 1

GND

1k
D6 1N4148

1n5819

1N5337B

JP1 IC3A
C19 .1u
4 2 PRE D CLK CLR Q\ 6 Q 3 GND 1 5

74HC08

D3

1N5337B

D2

1n5819

GND

10u

GND

GDT OUTPUT
2 1

.1u

C22

GND
+5V

C13

R6

1k

LL

D18

R10

Rx 20k
7

DO GND 2 3 IC2P 13 12 11

6 3

SIGNAL INDICATOR 74HC08 22n GND C3 GND IC3B

+5V
10 12 11 13 PRE D Q 9
GND

R2

10 9 8

HFBR-2412T or OPF2412TGND

NC GND .1u
+5V

1k

14

VCC

VCC

R13 IC2A

1N4148 D7

D15 1N4148

+24V

GND INTERRUPTER XR1 GND 74HC74

C7

.1u +5V

GND R14
8 5

R3 10k R7 1k
2 3
4 1

14

VCC

.1u

C5

D8 1n5819

D10 1n5819

LM311N 1n

C6

74HC74 GND
R8 470

OCD CT 1n GND optional GND

R4 10

D9 1n5819

JP4

D11 1n5819

2 1

C4

GND

CLK CLR

Q\

GND

GND

2/11/2009 06:09:59p f=0.80 C:\eagle files\drsstc\1.3\DRSSTC_pndriver1_3.sch (Sheet: 1/1)

D13

11
1k IC4
6 7 8

470

STB16PF06 Q4

C10 Q2 STB16NF06 C20 IC3P .1u GND

OCD INDICATOR

DRSSTC CONTROLLER STEVEN WARD 2008 REVISION 1.3

10u

JP5

GND

JP6

100u

BR1

C15

D16

1 2 3 330u C18

C16 330u

IC7 7805 1 2 3 1 2 3

IC6 7809

IC5 7824

JP1

D4 4.7v

D5 4148
D6 D7 4148
C2 0.1u
R2 20k

D1 5819

4148

D13

74HC74
C3 22nF

IC3

IC1

N-chan

P-chan
R11 10
C14 10u

D3 4.7v

D2 5819

74HC14

XR1

IC2 IC8 C23 DNP

Q1

C9 0.1u

Q3

OPF2412

D14 4148
JP5 Q2
0.1u C10

D18

LM311

R5 DNP

74HC08

330u C17
Q4

D8 D10 1N5819
10 R4

R14 1k

D9 D11 R3 3 10k

UCC27423

D15 4148

DNP = Do Not Place

2/11/2009 06:18:22p f=2.00 C:\website\newdriver08\DRSSTC_pndriver1_3.brd

JP4

IC4

12

C11 10u

R12

1k
0.1u C20

0.1u

C22

1k C8
R7 1k

0.1u

C13
C19 0.1u

C5 0.1u C4 1n C6 1n

470

10u

R10

1k

2/11/2009 06:20:11p f=2.00 mirrored C:\website\newdriver08\DRSSTC_pndriver1_3.brd

R13

13
R8 470
C7 0.1u 1u

C12

10u

R9

1k R6

1k

R1

C1

Quantity

$ each

$ total

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Vendor mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser/newark mouser/newark mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser mouser 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.33 2 0.57 0.57 0.57 0.63 0.67 0.58 0.09 0.03 0.04 0.1 0.4 0.23 0.52 0.27 0.09 0.03 1.2 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.1 mouser future electronics mouser MPJA Goldmine 0.53 10.8 1.97 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 4 1 9 1 2 1 3 1 2 6 3 1 6 2 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 3.1 0.99

Part Description 74HC14 74HC74 74HC08 LM311 comparator UCC27423 gate driver 7805 regulator 7809 regulator 7824 regulator STB16NF06 Nfet STB16PF06 Pfet 10uF SMD 1uF SMD .1uF SMD 22nF 0805 SMD 1nF 100uF 35V lytic 330uF 25V lytic 100V 1.5A bridge 4.7V 5W zener 1n5819 schottky 1n4148 diode 10k trimpot 1k 0805 SMD 475 ohm 0805 2k2 SMD 20k 0805 SMD 10 ohm .5W Green LED blue LED red LED Fiber optic Rx pin header strip 1x40 18V 1A xfrmr ferrite toroids Stand-offs 4-40 x 0.5" Pin connectors GDT toroid 5000 mat. aluminum project box TSC ferrite radioshack 1 1 0.82 2.99 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.33 2 0.57 0.57 0.57 1.26 1.34 2.32 0.09 0.27 0.04 0.2 0.4 0.69 0.52 0.54 0.54 0.09 1.2 0.24 0.08 0.04 0.04 0.2 0 1.06 0 10.8 1.97 3.1 0.99 0 0 0.82 2.99 0 0 0 37.07

Part number MM74HC14N MM74HC74AN SN74HC08N LM311N UCC27423P L7805ACV L7809ACV L7824ACV STB16NF06L STB16PF06L 81-GRM31CF51E106ZA01 80-C0805C105Z4V VJ0805Y104KXAAT 80-C0805C223K1R C0805C102K5RAC7411 647-UPJ1V101MPD 661-ELXZ250ELL331MH1 625-W01G-E4 1N5337B 1N5819 1N4148 72-T93YA-10K 292-1.0K-RC 260-475-RC 292-2.2K-RC 292-20k-RC 660-CF1/2CT52R100J ? 638-264-7SUBCC4704 ? OPF2412T 22-28-0361 LP433 G6683 ? ? 32-29-22-0002 270-238

schematic ID IC1 IC3 IC2 IC4 IC8 IC7 IC6 IC5 Q1,Q2 Q3,Q4 C11,C12,C13,C14 C8 C1,C2,C5,C7,C9,C10,C19,C20,C22 C3 C4,C6 C15 C16,C17,C18 B1 D3,D4 D1,D2,D8,D9,D10,D11 D5,D6,D7 R3 R1,R6,R7,R9,R10,R12 R8,R13 R14 R2 R4,R11 D16 D18 D13 XR1 JP1,JP4,JP5,JP6 not shown not shown not shown not shown not shown not shown

PARTS LIST FOR DRSSTC CONTROLLER REVISIONS 1.2/1.3 ONLY!

This page shows my small Solid State Tesla coil running with a steel screwdriver as a breakout point, and also contains a video of a singing arc !

Burning breakout point !

The electronic Tesla Coil is running directly from the mains supply in continuous mode, (no interrupter.) The current drawn from the mains is just under 5 Amps. The toroid is 6" x 1.5" and the discharge is a bushy plume roughly 5" in length at this power level

Although the spark is short, it is quite thick and the power-density is high. There is over a kilowatt of power being dissipated into a very small volume of air so it gets extremely hot. Within seconds the end of the steel screwdriver begins burning in true Nov 5th style

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 When the juice is switched off, the sparks continue for several seconds while the tip glows white hot

A 13 second MPEG movie le can be downloaded by clicking here. (869 KB) (Best results are obtained by right-clicking and saving to disk. Then play the movie from disk.)

A few words about safety: 1. Burning steel produces some really nasty fumes. When mixed with Ozone and NO2 they will surely do you harm. Therefore ensure adequate ventillation and don't breath the fumes. 2. The plasma is hot ! If it starts steel burning in seconds, it will damage skin in milliseconds. Do not take an arc to the skin or any held object. 3. Hot metal particles are showered everywhere, and the screwdriver remains hot for some time after the power is cut. There is a real risk of setting re to nearby objects or burning your skin. Give things plenty of time to cool before touching.
The hardware store where I got my screwdriver wouldn't honour the "lifetime guarantee" either ;-)

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A singing arc !
The corona discharge from the SSTC can be made to produce sound by modulating the amount of power delivered to the arc. This is similar to the way in which an AM radio transmitter works, in that it manipulates the envelope of the Radio Wave in order to impress sound onto it. The difference here is that it does not require a radio to hear the sound ! As the power delivered to the arc is varied, the temperature of the ionised air varies. If the power increases the arc becomes hotter and expands. Conversely if the power is decreased the air becomes cooler and contracts. This expansion and contraction produces the sound waves that our ears detect. There are many ways in which to modulate the amplitude of the RF generated by the driver. A very common method is to vary the supply voltage to the driver in order to modulate the RF power produced by it. Unfortunately this "high-level" modulator is relatively bulky and is very inefcient. It requires a large audio amplier which must supply substantial power. Therefore a more elaborate solution was sought. In this instance the mains was rst rectied and smoothed to obtain 340VDC. This smooth DC was used to supply the driver, and the conduction time of the MOSFETs was varied in order to control the RF output power.

This method of modulation has a number of advantages over other techniques.Firstly, the audio is introduced into the driver circuit which runs at a low power level and is more friendly to work on. Secondly,this Pulse-Width-Modulation is a "Low level modulation" process. It does not require a large high power audio amplier to vary the main supply to
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the RF generator. The audio amplier and modulator are effectively embedded into the solid state RF generator, to acheive a cheap, compact and efcient solution.
A 15 second MPEG movie le can be downloaded by clicking here. (1 MB) (Best results are obtained by right-clicking and saving to disk. Then play the movie from disk.)

The RF power level was around 75 watts with no audio applied, and the modulation depth was around 80%. Peak envelope power was around 200 watts. For this quantity of power input the sound was not particularly loud. The "plasma speaker" will never win any awards for efciency, but it was quite clear. The continuous brush discharge also produces a lot of ozone, really quickly !

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