RF neon tester and electronics jammer.

Original use of your RF generator for identifying wrong-colour neon indicators.. Now., if I can just find something similar for that big bag of mixed-colour water-clear LEDs...

Gordo

This reminds me of when I was a young boy and realized that the noise from an electric motor would interfere with television reception. I quickly attached a battery, switch and antenna and proceeded to leave it outside my next door neighbors house right next to where their TV was inside. Per expectations the TV was behaving badly when I came inside and my buddy's dad was shouting at it. I quickly went and turned it off. Football season. Oopz.

Michael Thompson

Have you seen the darsonval units on eBay? Basically modern violet wands. Do not use a metal rod in them as they are unisolated from the mains (like many retro ones!)

Big Clive

It's possible there may be some variation between trigger thresholds. They're a very cloned chip.

Big Clive

I've added a link on the description of the YouTube video.

Big Clive

Where did you source this gas discharge test kit? I will have to procure one. Way too useful! Checked ebay link but no luck found everything but.

Roddy Reavis

How generic specific are 555's? Because when I was building a Metal Detector their interchangeability was giving me very different wave-forms, which might have been due to me using components from a variety of manufacturers.

Andrew Donaldson

I'd heard of this before....a relative of mine worked for Granada TV travelling about repairing TV's (in a vauxhall chevette estate), I was only about 8 and he used to bring me handfuls of components when he came to visit...the tv repair van in the street was very common back then and its kind of strange now in 2020 to think that a whole industry existed to keep these tv's working.

LANDLINEMAN.com

Do I see a new drive source for testing my old violent wand bits.

Roddy Reavis

When I was in the TV trade in the 1970s we often held our neon mains tester screwdrivers near the back of the TV to check if the line-timebase was working. You could usually hear it on 405-line receivers as it worked at 10.125kHz, When 625 came in, the older engineers couldn't hear 15.625kHz, so the neon test was useful. About this time voltage-multiplier modules began to be used in both colour and black-and-white receivers, the neon test was less effective with these.

Not recommended.

Big Clive

They put the sparker on the coin mech and it arced to the switch input. Then they put a earth bond wire on all metal.

Big Clive

We had test equipment 100kv for checking our powder paint guns back in the 1980s No one was brave enough to try a zap from one, I did light an 8ft florescent tube with my thumb on the other end. We also zapped a few bluebottles. The high voltage tester was a bit Heath Robinson, the head of a vandegraph suspended over a metal funnel and long stick with a nail in the end and high voltage cable. I have looked for a picture but could not find one. We also tested gas appliance piezo igniters with a very old device a glass tube with 2 ball bearings and a threaded rod and scale for about 25kv as the gap between the bearings was increased.

John Harrison

Curious that they'd use a 555 and a multivibrator to make two oscillators. Why not 2 555s (or a 556) ? Why not 2 multivibrators ?

adrian

Will it work on EL wire ?

adrian

Simple, but effective circuit. I remember people using those black boxes to swindle the fruit machines in the club i worked in in the early eighties, little did they know that i had found an easier way to get credits after hours with a piece of wire and the mechanical counter.No one ever knew !!

Mike Hughes

Interesting device very simple and great it's using a 555, years ago folks in pubs used the spark igniters from cookers to fiddle gaming machines too similar sort of thing just high frequency.

I actually contacted you a while ago asking for the keywords for one of these. love mine, works great. even with the side effects..

Elliott Krimchansky

I purchased one of these about 10 years ago. Interesting device indeed.

AESFTW