Ion Thruster

One of the cool projects I've worked on this summer was this Ionic Thruster. After seeing the original idea on Make Magazine by Alexander Reifsnyder, I was amazed to see it work so I decided to build my own version!

To make use of the tools I had available I decided to build the entire structure using 3D printing. This way not only would be a more simple build but it would also be easily replicable. I already did a full article about this project on eLab Hackerspace's blog, but I'm going to summarize it here anyway.

Power over Ethernet Adapter

This was probably the simplest and yet one of the most successful projects I ever made. A Power over Ethernet or PoE Adapter, which allows the usage of Ethernet cable to transmit not only data but power as well for the network equipments.

There are 2 pairs of wires that are not used on UTP cables for communication on 10/100Mbps networks. So these adapters will allow you to use those wires for power transmission.

NST Spark Gap Tesla Coil

I remember being attracted by lightning ever since I was a little kid. It always fascinated me staring through a dark and rainy window, during a thunderstorm, watching lightning strike down, lighting up the entire sky while listening to the deafening and imposing sound of thunder. It was quite a show directly from nature, but for me it was more than entertainment, it brought along questions with it, waking up that curious side of me, leading me through my first steps into science: What exactly is it? How does it work? Why does it happen?

How great would it be if you could control that and make it happen anytime you want? So, a few years ago, I learned about Tesla Coils, an air core electrical resonant transformer, invented by Nikola Tesla at the end of the XIX century, able to generate high voltages at high frequencies, resulting in electrical discharges just like small lightning. From that moment I knew I had to build my own Tesla Coil.

Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) in High Voltage Power Lines

Have you ever wondered about the electromagnetic field around a high voltage power line? Well I have, quite often actually, but I never really found much information about it, at least online. Fortunately, I had to do a work about it, during my academic studies in 2012, it just asked for the EMF values for a constant height but I thought I should make it more interesting by varying the height and making the results a bit more dimensional.

The problem basically gave me the parameters of a specific transmission line and asked for the electromagnetic values at a constant height of 1.8 meters from ground (approximately the height of a person's head), considering that the person could move on the X axis of a transverse section of the power line.

Lamp Starter Blinking Lights

This is probably the most simple "project" I've ever tried, it's actually more like a small experiment than a project itself. I wanted an easy way to make light bulbs blink but I didn't want to waste a lot of time making a circuit and I wanted to use whatever I had laying around. So I decided to try a little trick:

I had plenty of fluorescent lamp starters and I thought, if this is a thermal switch, it should give me the blinking random effect that I wanted.

Laboratory ATX Power Supply Unit

Now this is a more recent project that I did back in 2012. As I started getting to work on electronics along came the need to have a decent power supply for my experiences, instead of always using different, cheap and weak power adapters. Since I had a few power supply units from old computers laying around, I thought I should modify one to fit my needs. They have a few different voltages available and can be quite powerful.

This was the final result. I wanted it to have a cool high-tech look so I painted the case all black and put some green LEDs inside.

Light Switch ON/OFF LED Indicator

When I was first learning electronics I was faced with a little problem. I wanted to have some kind of indicator to tell me if a certain light on a remote location would be ON or OFF. Sure, there are light switches with LED or neon indicators but none of them actually had one for the ON position and another for the OFF position.

I didn't know much yet so I went to talk with a teacher about it. He gave me this circuit for me to try: