Do you want to play around with high voltage, and lightning that plays music? Have you ever wanted to create your own lightning right in your room? Are you a fan of Nikola Tesla? Are you fascinated by the concept of wireless energy transmission? Are you interested in the AC/DC battle of the 19th century? Come to HackPittsburgh on January 30th for the first meeting of our Tesla Club!!!

HackPittsburgh member Geno will show off a powerful musical Tesla coil, and play various midi songs using lightning/thunder. We take song requests! A keyboard piano will also be connected to the Tesla Coil, so that people can play their favorite song on it.

This demo will serve as the kickoff for the new Tesla club at HackPittsburgh, which will also be free and open to the public. We will discuss the purpose of the club, its mission, its goals, and plans for various events.

Some of the possible events that the club wants to participate in are: Field trip to Tesla Con, special field trip to see the giant tesla coil at the Carnegie Science Center, field trip to Tesla’s old labs and power plant at Niagara Falls, trip to see Arc Attack live.

Some of the activities that the club will participate in are: Building your own Tesla coil, building your own theremin, building a coil gun, construction of Faraday cage or maybe Faraday suit, using the musical tesla coil as an actual musical instrument, wireless energy transmission experiments, playing around with the many interesting phenomena of high voltage such as corona discharge, watching movies about Tesla/Edison. The possibilities are endless.

Free and open to the public! The doors open at 7pm, talk starts at 7:30. We’re located at 1936 5th Avenue, in the garage around back on Watson. Look for our flag above the door.

We hope to see you there!!!

Special Safety Notice: The musical tesla coil that will be displayed during the meeting is NOT dangerous if used properly. The secondary coil outputs 250,000 volts at a very low current. You can stand inches away from the coil and it will not affect you. There is a safe distance of about 4 feet away which will be maintained at all times as a precaution.

People with pacemakers or other medical devices keeping them alive should not attend the meeting. The strong electromagnetic field and RF from the coil may potentially affect medical devices from a distance and disrupt their proper function. However, if you do not have a life sustaining medical device, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. The coil is 100% safe.