Hello and welcome to my website, my name is Marek Novotný and i'm an high voltage engineer. I was born at 19th of August 1999 in Czech Republic. Currently i'm studying Czech Technical University in Prague at faculty of electrical engineering where i wish to also work soon. My goal with this website is to provide useful information to electronics beginners and document my work.

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My first insight into high voltage was at very young age, when i was fascinated by distribution power lines and power stations, i remember looking at all sorts of power transformers or high power breakers without really knowing what they are for and how do they work. When i started high school, my interest in electronics was lost and replaced by a new hobby: programming and hardware! I've studied informatics for 4 years on high school from 2014 to 2018 and i continued with programming to my college when i started studying faculty of informatics at my current university. Unfortunately i found all the algorithmisation homework and literally no free time as very exhausting and demotivating. After just one semester i gave up the faculty and started pursing my long forgotten hobby: electronics. And in the fall of 2019 i started studying at my current faculty of electrical engineering and it was the best decision i've ever made! 

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I started studying at FEE CTU to learn more about my hobby, to learn how circuits work and why my transistors always blow up :D But i found so much more here. Not only i got to know so many wonderful people but i also got interested in physics in general, from quantum mechanics all the way to general relativity and astrophysics. Never before have i realized how important are properties of quantum world in electronics, for example semiconductors are based on quantum mechanics. And i can't even begin to describe how it felt when i finally looked at Maxwell's equations and actually understood them all. 

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Just few months before i started studying at FEE i wanted to build my first Tesla coil, i was inspired by many amazing YouTubers but mostly by my brother, who has also built many Tesla coils and high voltage projects and is currently making his Ph.D. in electronics on the same faculty. My first idea was to start on the easier note and create a simple spark gap Tesla coil but i changed my mind quickly when i saw that there are many wonderful guides to Double Resonant Solid State Tesla coils like Kaizerpowerelectronics, HighVoltageForum or Loneoceans labs. So dream big or go home right? I started my plans for large 2 meter high IGBT brick DRSSTC. I started winding the secondary coil at 4th of April 2019 before i even understood how will i drive it or how will i design my coil. I didn't even have the driver for it. Soon i realized it's not a good idea to start with a large coil and i started working on a smaller coil with TO247 IGBTs. I ordered all the parts needed for a UD2.7 driver board and pretty soon i created my first 10cm sparks when powered from 30V lab bench power supply. This was something amazing to me and soon i was even invited to show my work to a school event to the visitors. Many kids were fascinated by it and they could even touch the arcs without any harm while adults were very interested in how such coil works. This has motivated me to continue with the work and since then i was already invited multiple times to show my coil at school event in front of whole lecture room with over 300 people! As i finished my work on DRSSTC I i resumed my work on the large Tesla coil (DRSSTC II). Unfortunately at the time or writing this page i already made a lot of work and not very well documented, i will try my best to include as much information as i can about those coils too. 

 

Feel free to contact me on my social networks or via email: novotm90@fel.cvut.cz for any questions or messages. 

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