Yes, slightly inefficient but it’s an interesting workaround. I would say just grab a plug in lamp and splice the cable on the netral but this project really should have an earth connection for safety. Grab an extension lead and a standard ceiling socket, cut the female head off the lead and mount the light socket to some timber and pass the earth through and bond to any non-live exposed metal. Smashing the light also functions as a ghetto emergency stop button :) Edit: be aware that DC suffers more voltage drop than AC, keep the lines short or use thicker cables to compensate

I can think of three potential issues with a charging brick; The increase of resistance as a light or element warms up may actually be desirable as it would allow a higher start up current before providing stable DC Secondly, a charging brick would drop the voltage down to 12/24ish Thirdly, you won’t be able to wire it in series as you can’t share a DC negative / mains neutral on the return path if there’s transformer or different voltages

I see, the instructable suggests using an incandescent (specifically not flouro) globe wired in series with a full bridge rectifier to convert to DC. This would limit the current but is a bit ghetto and the light/heat produced is wasted energy. However a lighting ballast may not be useable as tesla coils are generally dependent on frequency. A globe or element would increase resistance as it warms as they have positive temperature coefficients. So in this case I would say wire a standard globe in series on the active side going into a rectifying diode or full bridge rectifier to convert to DC power. wire mains active to globe socket then globe neutral into diode into your circuit then circuit neutral to mains neutral. Hope this helps, best of luck (stay safe)

I don’t think you can use anything as a ballast. A heating element or light bulb could function as a resistor or fuse but it’d be better to use a resistor or fuse. What’s the objective of the ballast? To limit current, to provide start up voltage, output a certain frequency of power or perhaps to provide an inductive or lagging load to counteract a capacative or leading load and manage power factor

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