Designed by Darcy Neal of SporkLogic
Available for sale in the Maker Shed
The EMF Explorer badge kit lets you tune into the invisible sounds of electromagnetic frequencies. By soldering together your kit, you can unlock the ability to hear the hidden frequencies that our everyday electronics emit. Each sound tells a story about how these devices operate. This kit is designed for explorers of all skill levels, with all the components and instructions provided to ensure a successful build. Once assembled, your EMF Explorer board will not only be a tool for discovery but also a wearable piece of tech art, complete with an illuminated design to light up your exploration while you explore the electromagnetic frequencies around you.
Supplies Needed:
Keep Your Iron Tip Tinned: Maintain a tinned soldering iron tip to prevent oxidation, which reduces solder adherence and heat transfer. Clean the tip with a sponge or brass cleaner, and always leave fresh solder on the tip when not in use.
Take a minute to read this soldering guide: FullSolderComic_EN.pdf
or refer to this soldering infographic:
This photo is your assembly guide. Text in red indicates when a part needs to be inserted in a specific orientation. Be sure to read the descriptions for each part before inserting it into the board.
Careful Cutting: When cutting excess leads, hold onto the lead with your other hand or aim it down to avoid flying metal. Wear safety glasses.
Ensure all solder joints are well-soldered and each part is securely anchored.
Connect the batteries, plug in your headphones, and hold your EMF board close to an electronic device (e.g., cellphone). You should hear the device's buzz in the headphones.
Listen to different devices and observe the sounds. Explore the varied sounds from devices like laptops and cellphones. How do Bluetooth headphones sound? Notice differences when connecting to Bluetooth versus transmitting. Get curious about your surroundings!
This kit is designed for hacker/maker events where attendees can freely explore their surroundings. The PCB can be worn on a lanyard to help illuminate them at night. It's an excellent tool for those interested in learning more about EMF signals and electronics.
The PCB was created with Kicad. The illustration was converted to individual vector layers using Affinity Designer, which were then converted to Kicad layers using https://gingerbread.wntr.dev/
Every conductive material can act as an antenna, receiving small currents from electromagnetic waves, which can be amplified and heard. Conversely, anything that sends out various electronic signals will transmit those signals into the space-time continuum, which can be picked up by a coil of wire, like the inductors on the EMF circuit board. Electromagnetic disturbances from everyday household electronics tend to fall between 20 Hz and 20 KHz, within the range of human hearing. The EMF explorer circuit amplifies those signals up to the human hearing range (by a factor of 1000x).
Inductors on the board detect EMF signals. When a changing magnetic field is present near the inductor, it induces a voltage, which can be used to detect the magnetic field.
Explore other devices to see what else you can detect!
If you're more interested in this, check out this Veritasium video that goes into depth about how electronic signals create a magnetic field around wires to move electrons through them. You can also read NASAs guide to the electromagnetic spectrum.
Read about the EMF Explorer badge in Make: Volume 90!
EMF Explorer Badge GitHub: https://github.com/drc3p0/emf-explorer-badge
Darcy Neal's EMF Explorer Badge: https://www.darcyneal.com/emf-explorer-badge