i hate when the guys like awwwwww yeah at the start

Yup. That'll be the coolest thing I see all day.

I don't understand! Does a specific voltage create a specific tone? That's crazy. Crazy delicious.

"Unsurprisingly awesome"? Nay, that is still surprisingly awesome.

How is this not installed at some casino in Vegas?

ive seen this stuff live.
its awesome.

whats funny to me, they use fiver optics to transfer MIDI to the controller on the coil. haha, 5gb/s for a 10k file... hahaha

but seriously, its not for speed. its to keep ~half a million volts from grounding to their Dell...

~CR

Telsa is probably turning in his cold dark grave over this affrontment.

@pupaboy2: It's well documented that Tesla was actually a bit of a looney, so he'd probably be loving this.

Nifty, now if they play the A-Team song, i'm sold.

@P3nnst8r: +1 !!!!

I'm wondering if they could put this into the Tesla Car sound system ? It would be awesome and but will probably consumes all the batteries at the first song too :P

Freebird!!!

Hey they're getting a good sound outta those things!

@bobcostas: Wouldn't the spark be creating a decent amount of 'noise' if it were a copper link?

I am amazed. I have no idea how they did that but I don't need to know because this post alone has made my day.

That is all.

Although I wish they would have did level 1-2.

How do they get the alteration in tones? That's the part that has me stumped. I don't think it has to do with where it connects from coil to ground-point....

I'm going to puzzle over this a while. But awesome, it is.

Nicoli would totally be loving this. If he was alive today, he would've been demonstrating this in his lab to the likes of Sting and Bon Jovi.

With any luck we'll see this at Burning Man next year. Dr. Megavolt, are you listening?

for those that are curious about how this works, I looked this up when I first saw a couple of these clips cause I was going to make one. Turns out the theory behind it is pretty simple.

The tesla coil shoots out lightning, whatever. the humming of the electricity is ALWAYS at 120hz, the frequency of the juice coming out of the wall its plugged into. The ELECTRICITY is always at 120hz. BUT:

They turn the coil on/off at a high sample rate. This takes the sound coming from the coil to the high amplitude, and low amplitude alternating obviously, faster than 120hz. this means that they can effectively change the frequency of the sound that we hear. If any of you are electrically inclined, its like trying to turn the 120hz into a series of impulse functions to change the frequency domain.

FAKE! I call shenanigans!
Thats so fake!

I really don't think its fake, actually. I just wanted to be 'that guy' for once.

Hell yes!

I hate to be a Mario nerd (actually, not really), but that is the original SUPER Mario brothers song.

This is the coolest thing i have seen in ages...
(yeah that says alot about my life)

cool...scientists must've been bored that day..

GIMME GIMME GIMME

There's something very "Close Encounters of a 3rd Kind" about that.

whats the bill for that thing if everyone wants to demo a song?

Guys, c'mon. That is so photoshopped... the reflections are all wrong...

That's also how electrostatic speakers work.

LOL Nice. Also much better than the previous "installment".
The thing is: If they already made it read MIDI, they can play thousands of different musics with that.
I'd like to hear some Zelda, other Mario levels, and some other nintendo games.
Or even better: Monkey Island themes and Rise of the Triad?

uhhhhh...i mean....yeah.....that was.....good. I mean, like, it had sounds and i liked it, and it was um, mario bros. i know resign my post to everyone else that was speechless.
Way better than that other tesla thing yesterday. Keep up the good work Frucci, one day you'll be on the team maybe even a starter.

@soldstatic: Exactly right. In electronic music terms, they are essentially performing additive synthesis to artificially produce frequencies other than 120hz. Fun fact - the 120hz at which electricity is conducted in the US causes power lines to always hum a (slightly sharp) B-flat. Likewise, since European power runs at 220hz, their power lines hum a perfect tuning A. For those of us without perfect pitch, this is a great reference point for figuring out relative pitch.
[en.wikipedia.org]

@strider_mt2k: "Hey they're getting a good sound outta those things!"

At elast better than out of the mono speaker of my first generation Gameboy from 1989. Which is still working perfectly fine by the way.

Nikola Tesla is my hero.

Where are you guys getting 120Hz?

Standard single phase electricity in the US is 120 VOLTS at 60Hz.

As far as I know, other countries use 50Hz.

There was a similar demonstration at the recent Maker Faire in Austin. They played the classic NES Zelda theme song. Very cool in person.

that's cool. i wonder if you could get enough tesla coils to make a tesla orchestra... could you imagine what it would look like if you played Toccata and Fugue in D Minor? could this be the new wave of music, where we not only hear but also see the effects of the sounds? is the world going to blow up with too many tesla coils? stay tuned... same bat time.. same bat channel...

I envy the maker of this amazingness. I wish I had the ability to truthfully say, "Now if you'll excuse me, I must go and tune my tesla coils."

The fact that the English language can incorporate words into such a sentence almost makes up for its simultaneous capabilities to make phrases like "cousin with benefits", "I did not have sexual relations", and of course, "Paris Hilton".

Hmmm... I would not want this technology in head phones.

I like the people trying to take pictures of the show using their cameras with flashes.

@IF ONLY THIS WAS FLESHBOT...

The US produces 120v at 60hz, though the actual votage varies by as much as 15%.

Europe produces about 220v at 50hz. Nobody produces 120hz or 220hz electricity.

And to be even more pedantic, it is Hz. not hz.

Voltages can vary quite a bit from the standard line rating, hey are supposed to keep within 10% though. Also Tesla coils don't run directly off of line voltage, they have massive transformers which change both the voltage and frequency. These Tesla coils are supposedly 'solid state' which I would guess means a digital (switched) power supply, which are more efficient and compact than giant Iron core transformers and bridge rectifiers. They can also be very accurate in the frequency they output as can be seen by this demonstration;

Oh how I miss the days of the Survival Research Labs. A friend of mine had this warehouse in SF which happened to be on the direct power grid of PG&E so they built a 25 foot Tesla Coil and would turn it on on Halloween. After the light show, fire breathing robots would come out and fight to the death. Then after that we would all go to the other side of the warehouse and relax at the beach. Yes, a beach. Complete with sand, hammock and one small blow up kiddie pool. =)

This is why I love living in San Francisco so much!

Ok, cool, now.... PLAY TETRIS!!!!

@DaveTyranham: I second that notion_

@hyperocky: Good to hear some other SRL alums are out and about. When I worked there we made the pitching machine and the hovercraft with the pulse jets. I don't remember the beach, did you work there before or after I did?

It seems this music making ability is only for staccato scores. I'd like to see them try "Can you feel the love tonight" without draining the power grid - maybe if they used Pear Anjou cables instead of optic fiber?

@Fierock: or "I will always love you"

I would be so bold as to suggest that this project is *shockingly* awesome.

Oh, and also: Can they do the Metallic Mario theme from Mario 64 next? :)

OMG my childhood themesong!