EMP On-the-Spot

[ginbot86]

I had this old disposable camera laying around and thought, "Hmm, what could I do with this high voltage circuit?" The answer: A mini-EMP gun! Some doomsday people say that people everywhere will have tracking RFID tags implanted in them. To stay safe: make something that will deactivate such tags or just screw up people's electronics. Only thing is that I need a plastic case (I have an aluminum one, no good around HV stuff) that I'll have to get at the Source (I'm Canadian) but thinking about frying electronics should feed my lost soul...

Anyways, (sorry for getting off-track) I'm gonna build a chip fryer. Yup, that sums it all up.
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Jason the elite

[Turd]

Cool. So, your just going to discharge the cap into a coil?


eric

[ginbot86]

Pretty much. Only thing that I need is a switch that can tolerate high-voltage arcing.
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Jason the elite

[Turd]

You could probably use a silicon controlled rectifier


eric

[ginbot86]

Hmm, I'm not that good with electronics... And besides, the Source by Circuit City usually doesn't have that stuff.
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Jason the elite

[ginbot86]

Well, I'm almost done, except one tiny thing: I don't have any thick wire that's well insulated and strong enough to support itself. I'll post a picture when I'm done. I think I'll call it the EMPwner.
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Jason the elite

[ginbot86]

It's done! It's not powerful enough though...
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Jason the elite

[ginbot86]

Well, my EMPwner worked great, until the transformer started whining like "wooooeooooeeeeeoooooeoeooeoooooeeee" instead of "woooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" like something was draining the capacitor. Then the switch began to smell like burnt electronic stuff. Then grey smoke began pouring out of the switch. After that, I knew the switch died. Which means it's out of service until I can buy a new set of switches. Which really sucks, and the coil isn't very powerful... Drat!
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Jason the elite

[Alan]

Sorry to hear about the failure of the system. For electronics in Canada you can try Active Electronics. They are a bit expensive but have a good selection. Most people are doing mail order these days though from Mouser and Digikey.

It looks like there were plans and videos on this site to build one, it looks like the plans and videos have been removed.
https://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/static/r/f/i/RFID-Zapper(EN)_77f3.html

Good luck on getting it working, sounds like an interesting project.

[ginbot86]

Thanks, Alan. I'm planning on buying some wire and replacement switches on Monday. Until then, <bites lip> not much I can do... But before that it was working, so I'm confident I can get it back up and running.

My prediction is that I'll need to replace the switch every ~100 pulses until it fails too.

I tried a relay but I ruined one by causing the contacts to weld together.
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Jason the elite

[ginbot86]

Well, I bought the switches but when it's too late I realized they were for 12 volts. I had quite a bit of trouble working on it. It had even less effect when I added a new coil. So, mission failure and I'll try again tomorrow.
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Jason the elite

[ginbot86]

<bleep>! There's too much resistance somewhere in the circuit! I'm gonna give up on this project soon if it gets nowhere.
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Jason the elite

[Alan]

[ginbot86]

Sure! It might be just a broken wire...

I'll post it ASAP.

Thanks Alan!
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Jason the elite

[ginbot86]

Well, I resoldered the wires, and used a relay to do the heavy work of switching. Still, something's not right, maybe the coil has too many windings (I used 22 feet of wire and about 10 or so windings) and used new wires. Maybe something broke in the main switch. I'll replace the toggle tomorrow. Current status: improved, still broken.

http://www.freewebs.com/the-semi-hacker/blog.htm

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Jason the elite