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Registered Member #1643
Joined: Mon Aug 18 2008, 06:10PM
Location:
Posts: 1039
It's winter. I don't want to be running a tesla coil in 1ft of snow, as its snowing. My house has computers, and the only place i can run and test my coils on a scope, is my room.
Tesla coils emit fields as we know...Enogh to make my DRSSTC secondary spark to a metal heatsink, while its sitting 10ft away. However, There's a computer in my room.
If i want to run my coil in my room, and keep my computer safe, whats best? Is it ok to let it run as is?
My computer front/back are plastic, and the sides are 3mm thick aluminum.
* Should I power it down, leave it plugged in? * Should I fully plug it out, and leave it as is? * Fully plug it out, ground the case? * Faraday cage it and plug it out?
What's a good procedure, to keep my computer safe from frying any parts due to SSTC interference? My coil can be put at a max of 10ft away. There's no rooms in my house that i can run a tesla coil, without a computer/TV/console being in the room...
Registered Member #2922
Joined: Sun Jun 13 2010, 12:08AM
Location:
Posts: 226
I think that the interference isn't big to kill your computer... The computer case is a "faraday box...". In my life I never kill a tv, amplifier, computer with my DRSSTC.. I think that isn't a problem..
Registered Member #618
Joined: Sat Mar 31 2007, 04:15AM
Location: Us-Great Lakes
Posts: 628
If you are running a DRSsstc I can't answer for that but if its just a SSTC (don't know if it makes a difference) you can leave the PC plugged in, At least that's what I did last time i had a running one and the coil was 20ft away from the pc and both where plugged into house ground, the speakers to the pc where emitting noise though, some one may chime in with a better suggestion.
Registered Member #1643
Joined: Mon Aug 18 2008, 06:10PM
Location:
Posts: 1039
There's a story behind this. I lost my last large computer. I booted it up one day from a redraft and it complely died. Wouldn't boot. Just showed errors. I did my own checks and brought it into a repair shop. The guy replaced the mother board, psu, CPU, ram, everything and still didn't get it to work. He spent 6 hours on it and wanted to chuck it out the window.
My bet of course says it died from a natural cause. From mayb being on too long. I have been running tesla coils near it for maybe 8 months and it randomly dies on a reboot. Then my dad goes asking people like at best buy, hearing "tesla coils can kill computers easily!" and a guy from home depot that has one agrees.
I have a 24" tall secondary mini-sstc full bridge tesla coil. The ground is earth, by a wire going outside into the ground. I have been running it anyways, but it always lingered in my mind. My laptop is near it all the time for audio modulation, and it runs happy and shows no odd behavior while it's pumping midi.
Registered Member #3595
Joined: Mon Jan 10 2011, 04:46AM
Location:
Posts: 26
I haven't had any problems with my TC's around computers/laptops except for some interference with my mice. On my home computer the USB mouse would deactivate whenever the TC was fired up and had to be plugged back in afterwards, and when my laptop is too close sometimes my touchpad will be unresponsive and my cursor will fly all over the place!
This is with various Fres on different coils in the range 500-2000kHz
Registered Member #1316
Joined: Thu Feb 14 2008, 03:35AM
Location: Cambridge, MA
Posts: 365
I have had my 600 watt or so base fed vttc plasma tweeter freeze my ipod. That was when it was connected to the audio input jack of the project though, so I dont know if the interference was radiated or just conducted through the audio cable. I also suspect the same system of freezing a cheep CD player I would connect to it. However, the cd player was cheep and I think it had some other problems. In both cases a grounded metal shield would help at lower power levels. At higher power levels devices just froze anyways.
Registered Member #1643
Joined: Mon Aug 18 2008, 06:10PM
Location:
Posts: 1039
Ya at most with my laptop the cursor goes wacky when it's cranked. My desktop acts fine. I just wonder what killed it. Such a random fluke to work fine and have a reboot kill it. So we have a computer that had every part replaced to find no fix. Maybe a wire is flukes or maybe it's extreamly picky on if a led died, a fan, etc...
Either way...it's probably ok then to have it plugged and on compared to plugged and turned off I take it.
Registered Member #152
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 03:36PM
Location: Czech Rep.
Posts: 3384
I have never had problems with SSTC/VTTC running near a PC. But when running the "plasma flame" tube oscillator, my TV was completely losing the horizontal output and there were vertical lines randomly flashing on it. I could imagine that this might do some damage to nearby electronics...
Registered Member #618
Joined: Sat Mar 31 2007, 04:15AM
Location: Us-Great Lakes
Posts: 628
I'm gonna say i you can run the TC about 10ft or more away from the pc you shouldn't have too much of an issue even though the case of the pc is shielded via the house ground I imagine the keyboard, mouse monitor and other peripherals may pick up the EMF- created by the TC if the its closer then 10ft from the pc, and cause voltage spikes to enter the system.
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Tesla coils around electronics
