EMF Detector

Name: EMF Detector
SKU: 8292
Price: 24.00 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.00 (2 reviews)

(2 Reviews)

Listen to Electro-Magnetic Fileds with this simple detector kit

Designed by The Curious Electric Company in United Kingdom

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Listen to Electro-Magnetic Fileds with this simple detector kit

What is it? This electronic circuit detects changes in local electro-magnetic fields and converts them to human-audible sounds. Electro-magnetic fields are all around us, but are usually invisible an…

What is it?

This electronic circuit detects changes in local electro-magnetic fields and converts them to human-audible sounds.

Electro-magnetic fields are all around us, but are usually invisible and silent. This detector uses two inductors to give a stereo audio output of the noise created by electro-magnetic fields.

This is useful for investigating electronic circuits, checking power supplies and investigating the unseen world around us.

This kit includes a high-quality PCB, all the components, an enclosure and a pair of in-ear earphones.

This is an easy kit to build and should take in the region of 1 hour to construct.

Note: The sensors need to be close to the device being measured (touching the outer sheath of a cable for example). The output totally depends upon the EMF field so the stronger the field, the louder the sounds.

Parts included in this kit:

PP3 Battery Clip
100uf Capacitor x2
2.2uf Capacitor x4
100k Resistor x2
1k Resistor x 3
390k Resistor x2
5mm Red LED
Switch
Jack Phone Socket
OPA2134 Op-Amp
22mH Inductors x2
8 Pin IC Holder
In-ear headphones
Enclosure - Laser-cut acrylic
M3 Hex spacers 9mm
M3 6mm machine screws
M3 10mm machine screws

Instructions

The instructions for are available here.

Full PCB files, enclosure and schematic files are available on GITHUB here.

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Review Breakdown

Average Ratings

Product: (3.00)

Documentation: (4.50)

Shipping: (4.50)

Communication: (4.00)

Michael | May 19, 2017

Great Educational Kit

I bought this kit mainly because I wanted a different type of easy soldering project than the usual digital clocks and blinking LEDs. It arrived very promptly in good anti-static packaging, and with a set of printed instructions that were easy to read and included the schematic. The resistors were bundled, which is nice when you are a beginner like me, and the PCB was very well marked and made it easy to understand the assembly. The plastic case is easy to assemble and is reasonably durable and attractive for the price.
After assembly, I powered my new detector up and investigated the sources mentioned in the manual. The background noise from the environment is moderately loud, but when I ran the detector over a laptop and smartphone screen I could easily hear the difference between the less active parts of the screen and the power couplings. My TV made a different, louder noise, and the tubes of my nixie clock and its 180V DC power supply were also very loud and very distinct. The transistors in the power supply are very high pitched and screaming sounding. I listened to a 110V surge protector to compare, and it had a much deeper tone and sounded like it was operating on a different frequency, I guess?
Overall, as a beginner to electrical circuitry, this kit has been very stimulating during assembly and during my novice investigations of electronic devices.

Marcus | May 10, 2017

Works but barely

This device is useful as a proof of concept. I assembled it and then tested it and all I heard was a faint white noise that changed vaguely around an EMF but it had to be very close and even then it was not easy to tell if it was just random. I then thought maybe I put the chip in backwards, well I hadn't but when I reversed the chip it fried it and now I have a device that really doesn't work. Other than that the quality of the component seemed very good.

Response from The Curious Electric Company | May 11, 2017

Thanks for the review.
Yes - it does need to be very close to the cable/device to detect (basically the sensors need to tocuh the cable/device).
I'll update the info to say this.
I've had pretty good volume/output from this but very variable with the source - old AC power supplies are very loud, phone backlight power supply is quite feint, but audiable when close to the front of the phone.
You can improve the sensitivity with a larger hand wound inductor. Its based on the ElektroSlutch and they ahve plans for hand wound sensors: https://lom.audio/product-category/elektrosluch/
If you'd like me to send another IC then I can put on in the post to you.
Regards,
Matt