To start, we need to find the wavelength for the frequency we want to block. But as your target frequency increases the wavelength gets small enough that it can sneak through chicken wire, so you need to use something tighter. It’s the same principle that allows you to use standard chicken wire as a RF reflector as long as you’re working with relatively low frequencies. The trick is to make sure the holes in the cage material are smaller than the wavelength you wish to block. Put simply: if you simply want to protect a device from interference (or prevent it from causing interference) then it’s enough to enclose it in a metal box but if you want something that you can experiment with, you’ll probably want a cage. Among other advantages, this allows observation of the subject inside of the cage. In comparison to a Faraday shield, the cage variant is not a solid object, but rather a metallic mesh. Faraday Cage DesignĪt the most basic level, a Faraday cage is an enclosure made of a conductive material that blocks electromagnetic fields. While it’s hardly a perfect specimen, it clearly works, and it didn’t take anything that can’t be sourced locally pretty much anywhere in the world. While it’s true that building a perfect Faraday cage for a given frequency involves math and careful attention to detail, putting together a simple model for general purpose use and experimentation turns out to be quick and easy.Īs an exercise in minimalist hacking I recently built a basic Faraday cage out of materials sourced from Home Depot, and thought it would be interesting to not only describe its construction but give some ideas as to how one can put it to practical use in the home lab. It could be that there’s a certain mystique about Faraday cages, an assumption that their construction requires techniques or materials outside the realm of the home hacker. Yet despite being such a well known device, the average hacker still doesn’t have one in their arsenal. Most Hackaday readers are no doubt familiar with the Faraday cage, at least in name, and nearly everyone owns one: if you’ve ever stood watching a bag of popcorn slowly revolve inside of a microwave, you’be seen Michael Faraday’s 1836 invention in action.
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