Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff
Can I make a machine that detects a transformer from arcoss the street ?
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lordvader88:

--- Quote from: Marco on June 15, 2019, 11:18:02 am ---
--- Quote from: lordvader88 on June 15, 2019, 05:02:08 am ---I would like to make a senor, for fun, such that if I point it at the electrical grid wires, on poles, 20ft in the air,, I will get a very strong signal, such that I know the senor is pointing right at the wire's.

--- End quote ---

From E/M the wavelengths involved preclude imaging. All the fields from all the wires around you blend together.

--- End quote ---
Does any one make machines that instead of showing temperature gradients, like heat visions, shows electrified wires, like in a house, through walls ? I've used it in video games, IDK if they are real or not.
lordvader88:
So is there any heat vision or microphone circuit equivalent that u could point at something like a big pole transformer, and be-able to hear or see the thing working ? I know it heats up and u could just use heat vision that way to see it's working.
ebastler:

--- Quote from: lordvader88 on June 15, 2019, 05:21:30 pm ---Does any one make machines that instead of showing temperature gradients, like heat visions, shows electrified wires, like in a house, through walls ? I've used it in video games, IDK if they are real or not.

--- End quote ---

I have used light sabres in video games.  :P

Edit: On a more serious note, you can have near-field probes which detect that an electrical wire is nearby. (You have probably used them before you drill a hole into a wall.) But as Marco stated above, the electromagnetic fields associated with 60 Hz mains frequency do not lend themselves to imaging.

Just calculate the wavelength of a 60 Hz electromagnetic wave. And you will conclude that
(a) your mains wires at home constitute antennas which are only a tiny fraction of the wavelength long, so they are very inefficient radiators, and
(b) the spatial resolution of an imaging device operating at that wavelength would be rather disapointing.
lordvader88:
My DMM picks up the household 60Hz wires, buts it's not directional at all it seems,idk. So maybe I want DMMs at the points of a cube
David Hess:
A small dish antenna and ultrasonic receiver (audio down converter) can "hear" the corona discharge from exposed insulators.  There are some videos on YouTube demonstrating this.  I guess the power company uses this method to find leaky insulators for cleaning or replacement.  An ultraviolet detector would work for this also but I think sensitivity and signal to noise ratio would be a problem.

An impractically large directional antenna could probably detect the 120 Hz buzz from of a transformer or 180 buzz from saturation.

Magnetic loop antennas could detect the leaking flux from a transformer but would detect the direction of the flux rather than pointing toward the transformer.
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