Tesla Coil Wireless Communication: Transmitting Digital Information using Tesla Coils

Not only for transmitting power, Tesla envisioned using his "Tesla coil" to transmit information around the world, wirelessly. But would this work in the modern age of digital information?

Can we modulate a Tesla coil, based on a digital signal, to encode binary information and then decode that data with another nearby Tesla coil, tuned to the same resonant frequency? Yes... Kind of. After adding fiber optic isolation, a MOSFET to interrupt the vacuum tube Tesla coil (VTTC) serving as the transmitter, a signal conditioning filter on the receiver Tesla coil, and reconfiguring the VTTC to run off of smooth DC input power, we are indeed able to transmit digital information in the form of serial data over UART between two Raspberry Pi's, "via Tesla coil." The data rate (or baud rate) must be set extremely low, however, in order to work around the Tesla coil's slow transient response, due to how it functions as loosely coupled resonant transformer.

Is this a good way to communicate information? Absolutely not. Way too much work for such low data rates. There's a reason we use far-field radio communication for everything and not near-field resonant coupling. It's simply a better solution. But you don't always learn something from only doing things the right way all the time, do you?

Tesla coils are dangerous. Do not try this yourself unless you are very experienced working with high voltage electricity.

Music by RKVC.

[peterc]

Very well made video . Hope i could to at least a quarter of these tesla coil experiments but unfortunately i can't . I hope your channel will get more attention in the future, just keep up your good work .

[VIKEHV]

This is very cool! Can't wait to see that big tube be put to use. Very good work. Thumbs up!

[arshakir]

remember me when you hit 1 million subs

[dreamraw]

Hi, did you use any resources when building this project? If so, would you mind sharing them, thanks!

[iamjefftacobell]

i see you are a styro fan, I will subscribe. I expect great things from you.

[firefox]

Your smothing capacitor is very small for the 200 micro farad at 2.1kv, my 5kv 60 micro farad capacitor is mutch bigger (but its also older and is ratet for a higher voltage). Amazing vid, you really did a good job. I just had a question, isn't the welding helmet to slow to protect your eyes from the bright light? Wouldn't it be better to use a passive welding glass or a passive helmet with a high shade welding glass (for example shade 16)? And if it is fine, how fast is your welding helmet then and what shade? (1/10'000s, 1/20'000s or 1/30'000s).
Thank you so mutch an I hope, you use that big vaccuume tube soon.
Firefox

[crazyforenergy]

Seus vídeos ficam cada vez melhores, parabéns amigo, gosto muito do seu canal.

[SpectrumDIY]

You do such great work, I'm glad I found your channel. 😮

[Zulzander]

Stopped here after reading about Nik Tesla and his UFO stuff, said he was talking to aliens. Thought the coils could be used as the transmission. You were my first stop, thanks for the deep dive its what I was looking for. if you read this, try to talk to aliens with your coils.

[Jbond]

Nice to know this is actually possible. Very interesting. Did you ever try a Nikola Tesla coil aka a TMT(Tesla Magnifying Transmitter) coil. 120 years later and most people can't grasp the power of a 1/4 resonate wave connected to ground with a surge suppressor/spark gap. What a strange thing to say and what a strange world we live on?

[Doctorlockpick]

You need to use sphere top loads with no breakout point. You were wasting energy with the plasma in the form of heat and light plus you should use a dual reasonant solid state tesla coil

[patolol]

holy moly i tought u had like 600-700K subs woah

[HoorGuvLabs]

this is actually so cool, and a great video as always

[alo]

I use tesla coil 15w kit and i can hear sound on fm radio

[chrisp.coatspaintco.]

Its my understanding these coils were primarily built when physics departments were having contests to see who could make the biggest arcs. These probably arent designed or tuned for high bandwidth communication.

[ShaneyBoogz]

Just a stoner stopping by to say, you’re smart as fuck sir.

[chrisp.coatspaintco.]

What is the limiting factor for bandwidth?

[kdkinen]

You're very smart. However, Tesla designed his system to not radiate out into space, and it is to be connected to direct ground or one wire of hair thickness is acceptable. For virtually full power transfer.
Another However is.. you must transmit at lower frequency, congruent with ground wave propagation.
He stated this in his own words in a courtroom question and answer period with lawyers present with Stenographer.

[alexselectrical]

The capacitor is on my testicular are 10 times bigger than that so I would say the same thing about the capacitor

[alexselectrical]

But I built my own capacitor so I know the capacitance of mine so