strobe lights

Archiver

Hi All

Dose any one know where I might find some info on how to make a 12V strobe light that will take a signal from a bs2p?

Thanks
TC

Archiver

>Dose any one know where I might find some info on how to make a 12V strobe
light that will take a signal from a bs2p?

Anthony,

Photographic strobes generally want a contact closure to fire. That should
be easy to emulate with an optoisolator or solid-state relay.

If you need something that repeats rapidly, and you're not terribly
concerned with flash duration, you could use a 6V incandescent lamp and
overdrive it with brief 12V pulses (10~50mS?) controlled by the Stamp. It's
not fast enough to freeze motion like a gas tube, but it gets attention
just as well. A darlington power transistor or MOSFET provides the
interface. Select one that handles big current spikes safely-- cold
filament resistance can be as little as 10% of the hot value.

You could also make a very effective repeating strobe with an array of
white LEDs. It doesn't need high voltage like gas tubes do, but cost
escalates quickly if you need a lot of brightness...

Mike Hardwick, for Decade Engineering -- <http://www.decadenet.com>
Manufacturer of the famous BOB-II Serial Video Text Display Module!