Photographer triggers flashbacks
Photography enthusiast Nick Pagazani was hindered by the range and fixed location of his camera's flash.Since his camera has no connector for an external flash, he needed a light-activated slave trigger to fire a remote strobe. It had to ignore the pre-flashes used for red-eye correction and fire only on the main flash.
His solution: Use a microcontroller to count pulses from a phototransistor and trigger the strobe at a switch-selectable count. Brighten up your shadowy background with this flashy accessory.
You can download the build instructions in this zip file.
This Gadget Freak originally appeared in Design News.
Circuit Description
For the microcontroller I decided to use the PIC12F629 for its small size and the fact that it has an internal oscillator to help reduce the part count. The main portion of the circuit is the sensing circuit.




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