RSSSteve Ward and Jeff Larson constructed these two solid-state Tesla coils, then programmed them to play the Super Mario Brothers theme.
Twin Solid State Musical Tesla coils playing Mario Bros theme song at the 2007 Lightning on the Lawn Teslathon sponsored by DC Cox (Resonance Research Corp) in Baraboo WI. The music that you hear is coming from the sparks that these two identical high power solid state Tesla coils are generating. There are no speakers involved. The Tesla coils stand 7 feet tall and are each capable of putting out over 12 foot of spark. They are spaced about 18 feet apart. The coils are controlled over a fiber optic link by a single laptop computer. Each coil is assigned to a midi channel which it responds to by playing notes that are programed into the computer software.Tesla coil super mario duet - Link.
Related:
Super Mario World cover songs... - Link.
Singing Tesla Coil - Link.
I wonder what this sounded like on an AM radio. I bet you could hear it for MILES away on AM radios. I wonder if HAM operators get peeved with events like this?
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Nice site, Check out mine aswell..
http://www.hotmusictones.blogspot.com
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Well, Being in the overlap zone of the Venn-Diagram of HAM Radio operators and Tesla Coilers I can offer the following thoughts.
One: Tesla coils are classed as an unintentional radiator, if there are reports of interference to licensed users of the spectrum, the FCC may require the coiler to change how/when they operate, or the fundamental design of the coil to shift the frequency.
Two: Coils are actually pretty clean radiators, when built properly, they emit all of their energy at one frequency, and due to the L/C relationship of a tesla tank coil circuit itself, the fundamental harmonics (x2, x4, x8, x16 etc) So even a coil operating at 60KHz, will only show up at 60, 120, 240, 480, 960 KHz, and even then the 480 and 960 emissions are several dozen dBmV below the noise floor, in most areas. Now I wouldn't operate one of these in the NRQZ ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_national_radio_quiet_zone ) of course, but still for normal use it shouldn't provide more than occasional UWB interference that is easially overcome with even human hearing. Hell, solar flares are more annoying on the HF bands to us HAMs...
Just my thoughts. Sadly due to living considerations I no longer have my wonderful workshop to tinker, and I never got around to a solid state coil. I have several coils in various stages of completion in a storage unit though.
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