Don’t Try this At Home

Transcranial magnetic stimulation is one of those things that seems too wacky to be true. Depression not responding to treatment. Let’s smack you upside the head with strong magnetic fields!

Don’t Try this At Home, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Edition. As odd as it sounds, it’s actually very well studied and works often enough that it has been approved by regulatory agencies as real evidence based medicine. It’s also now open source, thanks to the OpenTMS project by [Zach McGinty].

Though since its not approved by the FDA or your local authority, be very aware of [Zach]’s disclaimer that this is not a medical device and if you do build something based on the extensive data on his GitHub, you do so at your own risk. He’s got plans for the coils that go next to your head — made of hollow copper pipe to carry coolant, just like the pros do it — and the power supply to pulse them with mind-altering amounts of electricity. That might be literal in this case, but it’s also a hefty power supply: a pair of microwave oven transformers, switched through IGBTs in a flyback configuration.

We’re talking kiloamps here, so make sure you know what you’re about before you try putting that kind of power right next to your skull.