"I Hear Fire!" - Ind. COMMS 101
Wilfred@Cryogen.com

Listen Closely! This basic technology COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE if god-forbid we have a civil war in North America within the next two months or something.

This is a five minute introduction to inductive communications, one of the earliest and most simple communication mechanisms using electric fields.

The technique is simple, and can be completed in a matter of minutes. This example uses readily available materials at home and can be completed by a gradeschool child, even under emergency conditions.

Inductive or field-modulating communication is a very common technology, its development is typically credited to Nichola Tesla in modern use, but its known implementations span thousands of years!

A number of corporate and social organizations, as well as a number of nazi operations in the usa use this type of technology for their primary communications systems, which are easily manufactured at high precision and can be made in a basement lab at less than a cubic millimeter in size, ideal for mounting in an individual's ear.

Your system, however, will be slightly larger to make it easy to build, and will be more broadly tuned in order for you to guarantee that anyone within range with an earpiece or other inductive communications system are going to hear it, regardless of their tuning spectrum and affiliations.

Start your timers! Here we go!

Note: when radio communications fail due to either an EMP pulse weapon or nuclear blast, or when radio spectrums are jammed by hostile systems, this is by far the only  technology which can easily communicate outside the besieged environment.

The entire project is non-destructive to various devices used. except your refreshments...

Materials:

1 or 2 two-litre soda bottles
a computer monitor (CRT) (or maybe a TV)
some irregular wire or metal scraps, tin foil, or metal mesh windowscreen material (all of the above)
a streight stick of some sort (plastic preferably, or a plastic drinking straw, window blind turner, etc, 1/4-1/2" dia, foot or two long)
an audio speaker, preferably 8-10" dia diaphram if available, smaller is usable, though less effective 
maybe some tape, string, etc

Sources:

Two cyllindrical soda bottles... 2 litre if your computer monitor is 14-17 inch screen-- approx 30-45kvdc
The computer monitor (or CRT TV) from this desk -- if there was a pulse weapon blast, its useless anyways.
Bunches of wires, this phone cable, any other wires, preferably thinner solid or twisted, phone cable or speaker wire works best...
Tin foil from the kitchen
If you have an old house, you may be blessed with metal windowscreens made of tight metal mesh, alternately any other open-lattice mesh wire will do as well
A stick, all we care is that its streight, nonconductive, and fairly rigid.
Audio speaker... your computer's sub will work, also any normal 6-8-10+ inch cone would work... smaller speakers may also work, but might need a different mounting system to get the same physical deviation.
electrial tape, scotch tape, other plastic tapes, some string or fishing line, and you might want a screwdriver, knife/scizzars, glue?, and whatever other scraps may be desirable to make this work.

You're gonna need an audio signal to drive the  speaker and a power source for both the monitor/tv and the audio source... Perhaps your computer has a 30-minute power backup? long enough to read this, build the device, and plug in the mic and speaker for the computer, ensure they work, and then connect the monitor and get rescued?

Methods:

In short, an inductive communications device utilizes a field-effect technique that basicly depends on the modulation of an electric or earth/atmosphere/aethereal field using a physical deviation in field characteristics. The recieving devices are tuned to a specific source modulator, and mirror the physical amplitude of the field modulation. In this emergancy situation, you do NOT want your device tuned to a specific modulator, you desire a broadcast communication to ANY and ALL possible recipients, especially if they live next door and have an earpiece.

Your device will be a basic piston-core modulator, with a high energy environmental field and piston-driven ground, as the ground components of the piston come closer in proximity to various field generators, the resulting fluctuations in field intensity generate a corresponding flux in the environmental field, which then is picked up by any similar reciever in the region.

The basic design is a set of rings of various materials, coils of varying size and seperation, and a piston that passes through all these rings. The piston will have a grounding structure on it, which although it never comes near the high-energy rings, has a continuous field between the HE source rings and the central ground core.

The basic concept is that the physical motion of the piston will create a corresponding field flux between the piston and rings, causing a field modulation in the environmental fields, thus heard by anything and everything around...

because you do not know the specific tuning methods of your rescuer's earpiece, we will use a variety of different ring materials and ground piston designs, all of which follow an identical  design at different scales.

Cut a hole in the center of the top and bottom of the bottle(s) to allow the piston rod to slide freely through the center of the cylinder. Hopefully the plastic rod/tube fits well in the mouth of the bottle, otherwise cut the top off.

you will be cutting rectangular air gaps in the soda bottles (which are obviously the ring-holders) upon which to wrap the wires or materials and be directly accessable to the ground piston, without being blocked by insulation (plastic soda bottle)

Then you will be constructing a variety of different coil and ring layouts around this open-air structure you made and connecting them in place.

from each ring you will obviously need a lead to the power source, I'd suggest making these independant in case the material decides to arc to the piston, allowing you to turn on and off various sections.

Ring 1:
Tin foil... take a 30-40 cm wide strip of tin foil from the box, wrap it around a set of air gaps on the bottle, and make sure its a continuous ring (experiment freely later ;) ) and secure it on...
Ring 2:
if you have wire mesh or coax-shielding or whatnot, make a few rings of this material, try to make as many PARALLEL field generators as you can come up with, each a different mesh size or design...
Ring 3:
Coils... make a couple coils of unshielded (you stripped the phone wires) wire, varying air-gaps between the wires, etc, all in parallel in rings around the piston...

Continue to be creative... more is better here... but try to be somewhat scientific in designs...

the primary goal is to make different field types, meaning different sizes and shapes of air gaps and leads, all unshielded conductor materials...

The should all be equidistant from the piston... you wrapped them around a cut-up soda bottle.

I suggest using two bottles so you can cut the bottoms/feet off and attach them linearly, thus using the mouths of the bottle as guides at either end... also helps the assymbly process.

So, you now have a cylinder with various rings of inductor around them, with at least 50% open-air (cut away bottle) toward the piston. 

Now, theorhetically you measured the cone amplitude of the speaker, and placed the rings exactly this (or double, depending on design) distance from eachother on the bottles, thus allowing the piston to move with the speaker the full distance for maximal effect...

The concept now, is that you will tape/attach the rod to the center of the cone of the speaker, it will be suspended (or slide) exactly down the center of the cylinder and thus allow the ground field modulators to move freely across the planes of the rings at varying amplitudes.

Around the outside of the piston rod, you will connect a variety of field modulators which correspond to their associated rings and string a lead to each of them (to minimize arcing between pickups/rings) which you know will transverse the distance of the field generating rings (cross section) and thus modulate the intensity and characteristics of the environmental fields based on their motion.

Various techniques would include a simple ring, stacked rings or coils (inverse direction of the outer ring), stack of insulated fins (pieces of circular foil with bottle scraps seperating them) (these are similar to a stack of wire rings, though have different field characteristics), and anything else you can think of that would work in this case....

NOTE:

THE AIR ARC DISTANCE OF A 30kvdc CHARGE FROM A MONITOR/ETC IS 30cm on average, meaning you MUST make sure your piston has at least a certain distance from any point to the outer rings.

Typically, if you are using a plastic rod (your window blind turner?) that is 1/4" then you can have rings up to 1/2" radius, still clearing the arc threshold...

arcs are bad, they also tend to fry humans... keep the distance between piston and outer rings beyond arc or spark range (right outside of the "crackle" into the "fizzzzzzz" sound)

DO NOT GET KILLED TRYING TO BE RESCUED!!! 30kvdc ffrom a tv or computer monitor will kill you instantly if you bridge it. (ie, electrocution)

OK...

You have a piston with various field modulators on it, with their leads/etc connected properly and secured to the middle of the piston (your coils do the stuff, insulate and protect the leads) and extending out to both ends of the rod, then some, like 4x the length of the rod. (insulated anywhere not connected to the fins/coils)

You have a cylindrical soda bottle (stack?) with a bunch of leads extending perpendicularly away from it, consolodated a ways out to one side of the bottles.

Obviously, the piston goes inside the bottles... put it there, string the leads out the ends...

If you are suspending the piston, tie a couple strings to it, (rubber bands work well too) though make sure to give it play to 'go the distance'...

Situate the speaker and bottle/piston assymbly (horizontally, preferably, (less load on speaker diaphram) your choice)  so that one end of the piston can be connected to the cone of the speaker, the other end is sticking out somewhere... I'd suggest putting a circle of cardboard on the end of your piston, then taping that to the speaker cone, less damage, and easy to put on other speakers...

Make sure nothing within 10 feet is conductive, the wire to the speaker goes streight out along the axis of the field modulator, and computer is quite a distance away (or radio, etc)

suspend (tie/tape/etc) the entire thing if possible... anything it touches will distort the field, though if its on an insulated base it should be ok...

So... speaker to rod/piston within rings... c0olies.

Obviously the rod extends out at least a speaker amplitude each end, so make an arc (also a vibration coil for the leads) of the leads from the rod/piston out to a point which will end up being one end of your computer monitor's ground.

easiest thing is to put the speaker/inductive comms device on an insulated table, put the monitor under the table, a nd string a wire from its ground (below) to the loop which feeds/grounds the rod... make sure to put either enough floating slack or a ring or two of spare to accomodate the motion... otherwise it will break in a few seconds...

from the other side of the bottle, off the rings, are the leads to the high power energy source... connect them to a well insulated feeder lead that runs off the other side of the table or workspace... This goes to the 30vdc source...

NOTE: either wire will kill you... once you turn the thing on, stay well away from it.

So, lets first test the speaker piston assymbly... works? c0olies...

disconnect the speaker from the computer/etc

Hopefully your speaker is NOT plugged into the wall, and has no on-board amp... otherwise use a real speaker please.

place the piston at one of the three test points of the cylinder (+a,n,-a) and connect it to the power supply.

using a far-distant power switch, turn on the monitor...

if it sparks more than twice, turn it off, go DISCHARGE the leads for 4 seconds, and then go fix the point on the piston that is too close to the outer rings...

if for some reason your bottles are too small, try 3-litre ones...

test for arcing at various points, on-test-off-discharge-fix-repeat... and once you are certain that its clean, you may proceed...

hopefully, at the nom/neutral point of the piston range, you will have the most electrostatic discharge between the rings and piston, it should hopefully sound like a high pitched whistle, maybe a sustained hiss, but NOT a crackle or spark... Sometimes the device will power up and ballance the capacitance, and then go quiet... as long as that wasnt your computer monitor going to sleep...

So... now its time to fry the computer... try to discharge the audio plug to the monitor ground... if it sparks, then its likely the feedback between the coils and the speaker is high, possibly putting some insulation between the speaker and communication device, or extending the rod so the speaker is farther away... (otherwise you fry your sound generator)

Im saying computer because its easiest, if it works, then turn on the mic, make sure the speaker works, connect the monitor's power elsewhere (you've opened it by now) and make sure the mic-speaker ratios are maximized, etc

feedback broadcast to everyone's earpiece would be a good way to get attention, though you should probibly take the mic to the other room (or use a card with a feedback-limitor)

speaker audio should be right at the no-clipping range, maximizing amplitude and motion but not maxing out... (yes it will be loud) -- you could always rip the cone off the speaker and attach directly to the coil... but...

OK...

now that the speaker and mic work, UNPLUG the monitor from everything, unscrew the case, squeeze the circular rubber bulb connected to the big red wire and the glass tube and release the rabbit ear clip thats holding it down... you can probibly lift up the rubber to see it... IT BETTER BE DISCHARGED, or you're dead.

connect the highly insulated feeder wire from the other side of the table to those two metal prongs, wrap the rubber around it and tape it up, i'd even suggest shoving the mess into a slit in another soda bottle and thus suspending it far away from the rest of the monitor...

connect the other wire from the piston/ground to a number of locations on the monitor, especially the nickle mesh collector thats wrapped around the glass tube near the screen and the metal chassis, ground screws, etc.

put the monitor a long ways away from you, like under the table where it's supposed to be, and if its one of the fool sleep-type ones when its not plugged in you can either choose to try to fry the computer by plugging it in there or stick wire pieces into the d plug until it turns on and powers up... preferably before you disconnected its innards...

so...

from the other side of the room, turn on the monitor... run through the test described above, get the crap scared out of you from the arcing, fix it, MAKING SURE YOU COMPLETELY DISCHARGE IT FIRST, then plug the speaker back into the computer...

turn the monitor on...

if your system still works, and the neighbours havent come by screaming about "Hearing Fire" already, use that nifty microphone and communications device you made to talk to them!

say something like "Lookee!" "Runaway!" "DLine 420 smoke crack" "DLine 319 [your address]" "I know you wanna ask me if you can get some..." "yaknow, i got RESCUED the other day" "get your fingures out of your nose" "tv really sucks" "I wanna be a RockStar!" "aberchombie is for morons" "etc"

and then start broadcasting your situation and location, etc.

Within a short time, even in simulations, im sure you will have someone come to your rescue quite quickly... 

yaknow, over 60% of the american population has an earpiece or carries a device that has a similar broadcast-only modulator, like when your cellphone's mic is off, but it still has enough power to pickup all audio in your area and broadcast it to the spooks... heh, doesn't even need a powered mic, that 1 millimeter cube is a perpetual reconaissance device ;)

So, go make the thing, test it out... feel free to stick the thing to your regular radio when it's on for testing, then go downtown and ask who hears the radio... you could always loop an audio feed of some sort with lookee class commands, then  go watch entire groups of people spontaneously follow commands in what appears to be a highly coordinated and timed manner, almost exactly like your little sound byte ;)

Try it near a major university... tons of RockStars there! ;)

Then feel free to tell me how well it worked.... only in a test or emergency situation though, right? yeah...

-Wilfred
Wilfred@Cryogen.com






    
    







