Just found a 1000kV arc generator on AliExpress.. huehue :v

1 megavolt? That's the usual voltage level on lightning bolts. And with air's breakdown voltage of ~15kV/cm (could differ depending on humidity), you'd need nearly a meter of distance between the prongs *and* be able to achieve an arc between that distance without having shit arc internally, before you could ever reach 1MV. Yet arc generators' prongs are usually within 1cm of each other. I'd give it 10kV at best.

Also, they're generating the voltage of a lightning bolt for €3.65 apparently.. way too good to be true. Even components able to handle 10kV are quite costly, and components having a breakdown voltage of over 1MV is completely unheard of. I'm gonna buy one of those puppies to see how the circuit is designed and to zap the shit out of those bloody mosquitos in here - the only women that love me :'( - but I wouldn't be surprised if it just boosts the output voltage up to whatever until it can arc and short out. Completely unregulated of course.. which is fine but eh, I doubt that any of those components are rated for 1MV so probably the regulation is in smoking components acting like fuses when the prongs are too wide apart :v

As for the purpose of this rant.. nothing in particular really. Perhaps it'll educate some, I don't know. Just wanted to put it out there :)

Also if you'd like to watch some video material about this, you may find ElectroBOOM's coverage interesting: https://youtube.com/watch/...

You have a strange sense of foreplay, zapping women with a lightning rod
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Usual HV converters...
Used in uncertified tazers that can shock you painfuly. Because they are uncertified they can be dangerous (in certan situations)

Dont look on their stats, this is a ordinaly module, no different from others the 1MV is just a dick measuring contest or amount of sellers dishonesty.

@C0D4 there are all kinds of fetishes out there 😏
@Gregozor2121 yeah, looks like it.. probably some marketing stunt, just to please the home gamers. After all, high voltage sounds cooler than the explanation of breakdown voltages and voltage vs current (one can't create power out of nowhere so current capability drops as voltage rises) etc etc.. and dick measurement of course as well. On those Chinese sites, if it isn't price it's gotta be "extraordinary performance" that sets this or that Chinesium product apart :v

@RantSomeWhere I watch his videos as a daily entertainment source :3
I wanted to link it here (come to think of it, perhaps I should) but what mostly bothered me is that while on Amazon (which Mehdi covered mostly in that video), eBay and mostly Wish this is common, on AliExpress I thought it was regulated.. quite the surprise to find snake oil products like that in there as well to be honest.

@Condor on ebay you may find some auctions that have them cheaper. Have been trying to get one myself, but won't pay more than $1, so still haven't got one :P

@aritzh I've been trying to stay away from eBay to be honest, because they're affiliated with PayPal which I've had tremendous amounts of problems with. Besides, on AliExpress I'm a platinum member so that gives exclusive discounts.. and buying more stuff off of there could soon give me the final diamond member upgrade - only 441 points left :3

@RantSomeWhere ah, I see you're also a member of the FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER cult, nice!

the volts arent dangerous, the amperes are.

@stop THE VOLTS CAUSE THE AMPS!!!
Recently I've charged 2 lithium cells, of which I'd like to explain to you how they charged to prove this.

The lab power supply was set to 4.2V on voltage and 1A on current.

When the battery was initially charging, the power supply entered constant current mode and charged the battery at whatever voltage would cause that 1A current to flow (based on the difference in voltage between supply and battery). This current is determined by how much the load (the battery in this case) tugs on the power supply with higher voltage.

Of course the power supply being current-limited anticipates for that. For e.g. 2.5V on the battery, if the supply wasn't current limited it'd draw well over 2 amps from the supply, which could potentially kill the battery. Current limiting however caused the supply voltage to drop. Because again, the volts cause the amps. So in order to keep a limited current, the supply voltage has to drop.

Same goes for a person. If you touch a 15kV supply line, your body's resistance will break down - the dead skin's resistance won't cut it anymore and the electricity will go straight through your inner flesh. This is not an issue of current, the voltage is the electromotive force which caused those electrons to move into your body and onwards to ground. The current is caused by the high voltage that pushes those electrons forward.

And while yes ultimately it's the amount of current going through your body that determines whether you live or die, you can't have current without voltage. Therefore the voltage is the root cause of danger. And that's why the danger signs say "high voltage", not "high current". You can touch a wire that's running 200A through it no problem, given that the voltage difference between the points you touch (and if you're touching ground, between those and ground) is low, yet not feel anything.

.. cont.

@stop

On the other hand, if you touch something with a large voltage difference, those electrons will treat you as their wire.. in this scenario you die.

@Condor i know. a good memory has something to do with it.

haha. the dick measuring is the same as with watts for amps.

"5000W for 100bugs" - hey guest what!? No!!
just a method to attract those customers who do not understand what is going on in these things and what is actually important. they only decide what to buy by looking at numbers.

You can semi-easily convert the air into plasma with laser pulses. Plasma has much much much lower resistance.

I did the math on this a long time ago because I wanted to make an "air taser" to fry cicadas from several feet away. It would have worked, but requires several megawatts to function.

Interestingly, the US navy uses something extremely similar as an emergency backup communication system on larger ships. All I wanted to do was fry screaming bugs.

@Condor please don't end up nuking yourself. I mean seriously don't.

@Condor Thanks for the suggestion of ElectroBOOMs videos! Very entertaining!

@silverstar don't worry, I'm not gonna kill myself with this 🤗
@Root interesting! Never thought that you'd also be into using the angry pixies to fry bugs.. the more you know! 😁
@Haxk20 seems like I wasn't off by too much then.. thanks for mentioning this! 😊

@Haxk20 Can concur. I love the sound of electricity.

@Condor have you heard cicadas? In masse? 😭 Its like having a swarm of bees in each ear

Besides. Tasing something from across the street would be like magic. And the plasma column is really pretty!

@Root chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp 😂

And yeah being able to zap insects from across the street would be really cool 😁 not that it's really feasible, but yeah that'd be amazing! Maybe some sort of insect tracking with a drone would be possible though? And then mount the taser onto that.. I'd call it "the bugfu- zapping flying Condor" 😎

@Condor more like RZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ from every fifth tree for months at a time.

@Haxk20 I don't have a portable nuclear powerplant that can fit in a backpack :v

Laser could be interesting actually. A concern that I have with an arc like the one coming from a high voltage generator would be that when a mosquito goes to sit on e.g. my curtains, the plasma beam would not only fry the mosquito but also possibly set the curtains on fire. And one tiny arc wouldn't be a large attack surface for that mosquito either.. perhaps I could use the previous bugzapper's racket to slam the mosquito right out of the air - and wherever the mosquito is within the racket's area, its body would close the circuit. But then I'll have to make sure that the arc generator can't arc across the rods in the racket. They're only ~3mm apart from each other so 10kV could easily arc across that distance.

@Haxk20 that UV lamp method could actually work! That'd be a great design actually.. thanks for the suggestion! 😃

@Haxk20 aww come on, I really wanted a nice tan while preserving dark theme :v

I just bought a "15KV" arc generator for $1.5. I will report on how it works when I get it.

Actually not hard to make and if the current is low enough it's no problem.
1. Take a little battery, 1.5V
2. Wind some wire around a coil, one round and another one ten rounds. Now you have 15V.
Do this again and you have 150V, you get the idea.
Now the voltage can be high but it's not dangerous

@gamingfail123 that is the point of my first comment, an simplified explanation for people who say "its dangerous":
1,5 V • 1000 mA = 1,5 W | 0 Rounds deadly
15 V • 100 mA = 1,5 W | 10 Rounds deadly
150 V • 10 mA = 1,5 W | 100 Rounds probably deadly
1500 V • 1 mA = 1,5 W | 1000 Rounds safe (electric fence)
all values are for 50 Hz AC

@stop Oh, AC is also a good point as AC is way more dangerous than DC for us.

@gamingfail123 you cant build an arc generator without ac

@stop @gamingfail123

Actually I don't think that it'll be dangerous at any of those aforementioned values. Current capability of a 1.5V battery is one thing, but just like how a battery at its unconverted 1.5V doesn't kill you, this holds true at any voltages.. current is determined by how smoothly the voltage can run through the resistance. And if there's a short (or another situation where the current gets so high that the power supply can't sustain itself) the voltage drops. That's why Van De Graaff towers don't kill you even at hundreds of kilovolts.. their current capability is very low. So it's essentially just short bursts of arcing power, similar to an ESD.

Well, either way I doubt that I'll power it from AA batteries.. lithium ones are far more potent and I'm using them pretty much everywhere these days.

As for the part on how only AC can reach such high voltages, I'm not sure but I'd assume that a boost converter can also charge itself up to such a high DC voltage - of course assuming that parts capable of handling the voltage can be readily sourced. Especially capacitors seem to be either low voltage and high capacitance, high voltage and low capacitance, or high voltage and high capacitance but bulky and expensive as fuck 😰

If Back to the Future taught me anything it’s that lightning strikes at exactly 1.21 gigawatts!