Shock Or Treat Halloween 2018

November 3, 2018 by dewhisna

For Halloween 2018, we held a "Shock or Treat" -- a high voltage themed Halloween Extravaganza featuring a Jacob's Ladder and a Musical Tesla Coil, mixed with black light, fog machine, and other special effects. The concept of the title, "Shock or Treat", was to place the candy bowl in the middle of the high voltage arcs and see if the kids would get shocked or be able to get a treat. OK, not really. It was more to acquaint the neighbors visiting for Halloween with high voltage electronics, and particularly with the existence of the Musical Tesla Coil. And let them know they had a real-life "Mad Scientist" living next door to them.

This event featured the debut performance of the new Banshee Tesla Coil, from McWilliams Tech (https://www.ebay.com/str/mcwilliamstech), which performed admirably. It was being driven by a Quad Arduino ProMini 24-note polyphony MIDI interrupter, and powered from the Dewtronics DRSSTC Full-Bridge V1 (https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/51ELNHx2) and Dewtronics DRSSTC Driver V1 (https://www.oshpark.com/shared_projects/mQPBSs6i) electronics set.

A few minor techinical difficulties on the incoming power-feed required us to run the coil very conservatively. They were minor and easily overcome, but we simply ran out of time before the event to get everything absolutely perfect. What this means is that what you are seeing in this video is between 1/4th and 1/3rd of the true power this coil should be capable of. But for a first-time run, I am extremely pleased with its performance.

This video contains three random snippets captured by our videographer during the course of the evening. It provides a good snapshot of the evening for posterity, but doesn't really capture all of the coil capabilities that were tested throughout the evening, and is mostly for entertainment purposes.

Thanks to everyone involved in making this event possible. Enjoy!

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