The Plasma Speaker

Step 11: Interesting discharges...

Just a little story I like to tell you about...

While I was testing (well, playing) my plasma speaker, the 12v battery is going flat and the arcs are becoming unimpressively short. So I replaced the battery with my lab PSU I modified from an ATX PSU and put an 22,000uF capacitor in parallel with its 12v output and ground.
The 22,000uF capacitor is used to adsorb any high voltage spikes that may appear on the line.

When I connect the PSU's power to the plasma speaker and turned it on...

The arc are very different, instead of a sting of purple light, the arc flaps furiously and it makes very interesting light display. But this is not suitable for a plasma speaker, because the arcs flaps so much it just simply drowned out the music...

Here is a video of the arcs.

Well, I hoped you enjoyed this instructable!
If you have any questions, or need help, or found an error, or anything, ^{make a comment! I like comments! :-)}

Comments

[DANAN99]

hay i was wondering if you hook up the to leads to the primary of a tesla coil could you make a musical tesla coil

[KnexFreek]

 yo plasmana, can i see please see the flyback arcs vid? (this is on step 11)

[Plasmana]

emm yes...?  That is why I put it on 'ibles..

(If you are trying to say something else, please explain more clearly as I take things in literally. :))

[miladragon3]

the vid is private, so we cant watch it. Knex wants it not to be private.

[joom]

I believe that  Knex  means that the video is private and one needs to be your youtube friend in order to view it.

[Topolinux]

yes, why your video is private? it doesn't make sense.

[mik.y]

Why you made that video as private? It makes really sense...

[alaok]

How about the sounds, how dose they heard like?

[rob_noxious3]

I was wondering if any one could recommend a part number for the flyback transformer? I have found a few but have no idea which would be suitable!! Thanks

[juicyndkarma11]

okie so im ready to build this, first i want to an estimate of the cost, and second how long did this experiment take? This is really awesome i loook foreword to ur reply and ur further instructubles!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Tristian_Lyons22]

Cost me about 20 dollars (US) and took me about a month to get running smoothly.

[Tristian_Lyons22]

Hey i have two comments, both for Plasmana (THE man) himself! One: i think the arcs that were generated by the computer PSU were so flaky because of power interference. AC power is transmitted in a sinusoidal waveform, and any number of things can screw that up. I live in the land of 60HZ AC, and i bought a power filter meant speciffically for audio equipment for some late-nighting as a DJ i used to do. When i put my Computer PSU through this, the arcs came out perfect! So maybe this is something you wuold want to think about in case you plan on making your plasma speaker permanant (i am adding it to my system for display effects) Two: how are you connecting the big batteries to the flyback? i have a 12v 7Ah battery from an old alarm system that i was attempting to use, but it blew my entire breadboard when i connected it. (i later found out that it somehow put almost 22 amps through my board?) How are you stopping your batteries from doing this? Thanks for this awesome instructable! Im making a UV recative case for my speaker, and when its finished i'll post some pics on photobucket and link them here so everyone can see them!

[twist2b]

I used the original schematic..... 4HV's and I wanted a permanent arc as well.

So I made a power schematic.

Here it is:
http://www.majhost.com/gallery/BZPchronicler/GIMPCreations/first_schematic.png

Remember that ground in Plasmania's schematic is a POWER ground.

You can get the transformer from Allied Electronics

[eafindme]

Can I add second flyback transformer to increase the arc length?

[izidor7]

Hy, truy to get two flybacks... and connect the primar's parallel, and the seundars in series..., and higher voltage is garantied.....

[cbatti]

Could you use a fluorescent light bulb as a speaker? I don't have a technical background but it uses plasma.

[jiffycoil]

Great question, I would say no due to the fact that sound requires something to vibrate. With fluorescent tubes having a vacuum seal, there is nothing to vibrate. I wanted to try this out but I felt the output voltage from the flyback would be too much for a fluorescent tube to handle so I tried it on a small neon tube, the results were interesting. No sound came from the neon tube but the plasma on the outer edge on the inside of the tube pulsed to the beat of the music.

[Dr. Guru]

Great instructable! Now I have two questions that were probably included, but I did not read. My first question is: how much does this project cost, roughly? The second is; Can the volume be adjusted when the audio is input? Thanks, and once again, great instructable.

[ellisgl]

Why not use a $10 24V Regulated supply?

[ellisgl]

On the spark side right? Everthing else I wouldn't think would take all that much power. Or does the whole thing suck it up like a sponge.

[Plasmana]

It does not supply enough power, the plasma speaker sucks up about 4 to 6 amps. And the regulator can be easily destroyed by the voltage spikes while batteries are not affected.

[guyfrom7up]

the battery can deliver insane amount of amps in a second if it needs to. the battery isn't really affect by hv pulses