Lightning in your living room: Spiral MicroTesla

Here comes a dazzling DYI project allowing you to touch an electric arc (30 kV hey presto) with your bare fingers. No harm from that. Though powered by a mere USB charger, Spiral Micro Tesla generates spectacular and sonorous sparks. Instead of a large and potentially dangerous coil, Elektor presents this safe printed Tesla coil with limited energy, powered at under 5 V. The maximum power is 5 watts which can’t cause much damage, despite the staggering voltage.

Here comes a dazzling DIY project allowing you to touch an electric arc (30 kV hey presto) with your bare fingers. No harm from that. Though powered by a mere USB charger, Spiral Micro Tesla generates spectacular and sonorous sparks.

Printed coil
Instead of a large and potentially dangerous coil, with a lot of energy involved, Elektor Magazine presents this safe Tesla coil with limited energy, powered at under 5 V. The maximum power is 5 watts which can’t cause much damage. Despite the staggering 30 kV, when you touch the sparks produced by our Tesla coil, you will notice a slight tingling at most.
It is operated using a single pushbutton, cycling through the operating modes: Turn on, 5-Hz pulses, 10-Hz pulses, 20-Hz pulses, musical tune, turn off. Pressing S1 >3 seconds switches to high-power (1 amp) mode.

You must connect the Spiral MicroTesla to a reliable USB charger or USB adapter. Never connect it to a USB port of a computer or a hub!

Complete bundle including:

PCB with SMDs preassembled – yep, through-hole components need to be soldered –
acrylic sheets, screws, nuts, spacers
5 V - 2 A power supply