Glowing Hotdog

The famous glowing LED hotdog mains cooking thing XD

someone told me you can do this years ago and i thought i would give it a shot

why do the LEDs light? 

well apparently the resistance between the leads is enough to supply low enough voltage and current to light them yet not burn them out 

the hot dog sizzled and cooked until it folded in and i canceled the experiment

VIDEO:

results:

one cooked hotdog!
there was blackening at the fork points that go all the way down and the LED points but it was fully cooked and hot


the hotdog was 182.3k ohms and drew no measurable change in current from the variac


WARNING, DONT DO THIS AT HOME YOU CAN DIE

The Mains Cable Of Deadly Death

this is my mains cable of deadly death 

you would be surprised how often this cable comes in to play from testing transformers to frying hotdogs (to be shown later) 

cable is 5.5 feet long and has hot, neutral and ground jumpers

i made these 4 years ago and only minor repairs have had to been made on them ... they have done well to me (despite the tape and heat shrink all joints are soldered heavily) 

WARNING:

YOU CAN NOT GET MUCH MORE DANGEROUS THAN OPEN METAL LEADS ON A RAW MAINS LINE ... THIS CAN VERY WELL KILL YOU IF USED IMPROPERLY OR IF USED AT ALL WITHOUT YOUR COMPLETE ATTENTION

JUST LOOKING AT THIS PICTURE PROBABLY ALONE SHORTENED YOUR LIFESPAN

TOUCHING ANY OF THE LEADS YOU SHOULD ONLY DO WHEN UNPLUGGED FULLY

I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU MAKING THIS AND HURTING OR KILLING YOUR SELF!

HVDC power supply in a lunch box

i can spend all day fooling with ways to charge capacitors, test maximum voltage on components, test dielectric strength with hand wound transformers, buck boost chargers, voltage multipliers, and all sorts of things but one simple universal method to do just about all of this was easy and free to make

90% of all the parts were taken out of a single 1200w microwave and the diode was taken out of a secound microwave and the speaker terminals were sitting in a junk bin

Why a lunch box? well i had nothing else to put it in, its nice and portable and i can open it up with ease to fix any problems that may arise 

ill be honest its pack up and go-ability was a happy accident 

pared with my variac shown in the previous post vives an adjust able HV power supply that ranges from 0-3500v (estimated)



results?
charging a 3900uf capacitor to 400v in just 6 seconds

all that speed means more fun faster ;3

(3900uf capacitor at 380v discharged in to a small copper wire)

Bench Top Variac build

having the ability to adjust mains voltage is an extremely useful tool for anyone working from mains voltage
also having a ballast to prevent frying electronics, house wiring, breakers or just preventing the blackout when your working around lethally charged capacitors

i had a 30A variac i bought when i was 16 (years ago) and i only really used it with a mains outlet, with a ballast, with a volt meter, with a clamp meter and it was all just a mess so when i decided to repair it i decided to go all out and make one single unit i can carry around and use project to project that will work simply as a middle man between the mains and the project with everything i need on it

parts list:
30A variac
Analog Voltage meter
Breakers 15/30A
2 switches
2 power receptacles and housing
clamp meter
18ga solid copper wire
line filter
plexy glass
bolts
15A ballast

$0 EMP shielding in under an hour at home UNGROUNDED!

need a cheap and easy EMP shield at home?
we all know that grounded metal acts as shielding but a home  ground can also be a giant antenna
so what do you do?

you dont ground it!
its called the Faraday effect
(read about it on the wiki)


now how do you do this at home on the cheap?
well when time is a factor paper and tinfoil will do 


Unshielded 

about 4 volts peak to peak was detected ... just more than the amount required to trigger small 3.3v components like cellphones and laptops (each block is 1V and 25ms)


Shielded 

 covering every inch of it in tinfoil and collecting the foil together makes a box where very little radio waves can enter giving only 0.4V ... any device with proper noise reduction this will cause no noticeable interfearence




this is something to do in a flash when time is a factor to protect sencitave electronics you can not be without


for it to be effective nothing can enter or leave the box .. .no wires chargers anything plugged in or not 


*the box is actually isolated form the ungrounded metal fridge tho you cant see it

This is my precision rotating platform project ... it uses a stepper motor with a bike chain a gear and a shaft ... a notch will be cut in the top for a round plastic platform ... it can do a total of 300 steps per rotation (as of now ... reworking the software im going to try and push for 600) 
it will be used for camera panning, timelapse shooting, rotating, product shooting, 3d scanning exc
workign of software now and still pounding out the hardware