USB Powered Jacob’s Ladder
Published by Rob Flickenger September 28th, 2007 in High Voltage
This was a fun 20-minute project: A tiny Jacob’s Ladder made from an LCD backlight inverter, powered by USB. The ladder itself is made from a piece of 24AWG wire harvested from a scrap of CAT5. It makes sparks just a few millimeters wide, but they do climb very rapidly!
Rather than tempt fate and connect it directly to my laptop, I’m using a Zip-Linq AC to USB adapter. A powered USB hub would also work nicely.
Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough juice coming out of this thing to power a tiny Tesla coil… But I’m working on it.
And here’s the obligatory vid:
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The direct link is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D9eLipE5h0