How I Made an EMP Generator

I made a short-range electromagnetic pulse jammer that can temporarily disable electronics.

EMP Case File:

Parts List:
-3.7 Volt LiPo Battery

Follow Schizo:

Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

[schizo]

Wow, this old video from last year blew up a little bit out of nowhere, I'm really grateful to you all who are watching. Though, I have been getting quite a lot of comments and I wanted to address a couple topics regarding them. Firstly, I've been getting some comments about it's classification as an EMP generator, so is it an EMP? By the definition of an EMP to my knowledge, it certainly is. The device creates a high voltage in pulse waveform which the coil emits as a brief electromagnetic field. This occurs every time the circuit sparks, so it basically fires many weak EMPs in rapid succession, with some of those pulses being strong enough to mess with electronics. Given that, sure it's a shitty EMP, but it still counts as one. Still, enough of you brought it up that it's made me question my classification of it as such. Maybe I really am just wrong about what technically constitutes an EMP, but I'd appreciate some sources on that if you have them. Second, the toroidal ferrite core. I mentioned it very briefly, but I am and have always been aware that it weakens the strength of my EMP. Here's a story to help understand that decision: A few years ago when I was in high school, our small robotics club was adamant on bringing in some new members. Since we only had one robot to show off at the time, in a desperate attempt to have more showmanship in our interest meeting, they asked me to show off some random stuff I made at the time, one of those being an EMP (we're not gonna talk more about me carrying around an EMP device in high school). It had almost the exact same design and components as this one, just less well-put together and with the worst coil of all time (coils crossing over, sparks flying off of them). During our meeting presentation, as soon as I turned it on for our interested classmates from what I judged to be a safe distance (about 2 meters away), I returned to my fellow club members. The robot which had been working fine 2 seconds prior had suddenly shut down and we couldn't get it back on. My friend turned to me and said, "Jason, I think you knocked out Jeffery." From what I remember too, when we eventually did, the startup display was glitching and the program files had all apparently been wiped. It should be damn near impossible that my spark generator EMP could've even touched our robot from over 6 feet away, but our team was never able to think of another possibility. Realistically, while also unlikely, it might've been some kind of software glitch paired with one hell of a case of unlikely coincidence (hard to say since I'm not the one who programmed it). Still, after that experience, I've always been more paranoid working with pulsed electromagnetic fields since. If there is even a 0.01% chance that my EMP managed to reach that robot, I was not about to take that same chance with my only good camera. Therefore, I reduced the strength of the EMP by designing it with a coil that would have a much higher impedance. My goal with this video was to educate and demonstrate, not to achieve the most powerful device I could to end up on a government watchlist (I might save that goal for later. Dear NSA, that's a joke.)

[HyperspacePirate]

The ferrite core of your toroidal coil is causing the overwhelming majority of the magnetic flux lines to stay contained within it rather than radiating out into space. This device would be dramatically more effective if you used a large diameter coil with no core.

[RATTLESNAKE]

There's a lot of jokes I would like to make, but I really want to keep being able to travel by plane.

[alexmighty]

need this for the new york subway for people with their bluetooth speakers.

[ptrkmr]

Bros posting “How to: felony edition” for all us and I respect that

[DolezalPetr]

if you get rid of that iron powder toroid core and reduce the number of turns of the coil, the current spike will have a larger amplitude and a faster rise time resulting in a greater effect

[The_Loreseeker]

This looks cool, like an item you'd see in a video game - I'm imagining a survival-horror protagonist who needs one of these to get past a murderbot.

[igxniisan]

I'm fully aware that you added the toroidal core to trap most of the flux inside and only the leakage flux to do the job.. but hear me out, you can actually make it "directional" by putting the coil inside a copper or aluminium pipe, basically something non ferromagnetic.. also keep a considerable amount of air gap between the inner wall of the metal pipe and the coil. This is to improve the shielding in radial direction..

Now next up you can improve the coil structure, instead of making it toroidal which will trap most of the flux inside weakening the em wave.. you can just make it "horse shoe" shaped with the two poles open and facing forward.. that way, a short range but more powerful em wave can be generated.. Note that if u do like this then you'll need two separate copper/aluminium shielding pipes for directing the em wave forward. That's all I can think of. Thanks for reading your build is great though.. good work👍

[Speed]

We getting put on a watch list with this one 🔥 🔥 🔥

[rogeronslow]

Before building anything you need to understand the underlying physics. This will make your engineering endeavors far easier and rewarding.

[thethoughtfield]

the coil around the toroid is concentrating the magnetic field, that is what´s making it inefficient. you want the field to spread outwards, the ferrite toroid keeps it inwards

[Theballonist]

Pretty sure this is highly illegal and I love it. I remember trying to find plans for cell phone jammers and learning that it would be illegal to walk around with one in public. Similar reasons for this project. Keep spreading that knowledge :-)

[cannawithkendall]

This is marketable. Since everybody is carrying around an AI device these days I kind of want to carry around a small EMP device that shuts off the camera and they're listening equipment when they're near me because I have a right to not be tracked.

[johnypohoda]

No this is no EMP pulse as known from the scifi movies, but rather a strong electrical magnet that could easily erase ROM memory in various devices, thus effectively damaging the firmware. There is something like EMP pulse when a hydrogen bomb is deployed over the city inducing a blackout of non-protected electrical devices, which is majority of commercial electronics.

[hephestus]

Bro, this is pretty cool. I thought making EMP is quite hard. This might be quite weak, but it proves that the concept works. Great work!, +1 subscriber for you!

[rudeandrotteninside]

I used to like vaping because the devices look so cool but this is way cooler than that now that I quit

[christopherstrebe]

Is it possible to make one strong enough I can use it from my room to fry car radios when their bass vibrates the whole neighborhood?

[serinfel]

Cool project, great vid, loved the music. You had me at the 3D printed box. 👍

[GamingVlogBoxStudios]

Hey Schizo! I just wanna let you know, I've successfully built my own! Was able to reset my watch and lock the oven door haha. Thanks for the tutorial man! (I have no evil intentions, just science)

[Storm_Imperial]

I made a prototype of something like this. Good to know it would have worked.