Building a Sound Trigger: Part I

I ordered a kit to build a sound trigger with variable delay from HiViz.com. It comes as a bag filled with loose electronic capacitors, resistors, and wires. Fun! But, I fired up the detailed instructions and got after it.

The instructions are very clear. But, the kit assumes you have an extra PC sync cord to cut up in order to connect it to your flash. I didn’t feel like snipping a ten dollar connector. Luckily, the LumoPro flash I have has a 1/8-inch miniphone jack. So I cut up one of the two hundred pairs of cheapo earbuds I have, just to get the plug. I wired it up and it didn’t work. So, I did some reading and discovered that stereo plugs never work well.

I’d always wanted an excuse to go to Electronic City and browse the aisles of geek heaven. A mono miniplug was a buck sixty. I also picked up a black plastic project box.

An hour later I was covered in black plastic shavings as I used a Dremel to cut a perfect hole in the black case that holds the piezoelectric listening device. But, the whole thing fits pretty well.

And, as you can almost see from the video, it works.

I will need to continue to tweak it. It triggers the flash on every sharp noise, so if I use it on a dropped item, the flash will fire on the drop, and every bounce. That probably won’t work — but there are ways in the electronics to mitigate that. But, the basic device is operational.

Stay tuned for more.

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2 Responses

1. Bill says:

   2 July, 2009 at 7:59 pm

   Nice work! I want to do this too. Looking forward to seeing what you do with it!

   Reply
2. Scott* says:

   3 July, 2009 at 12:54 am

   You are the king of awesomeness.

   Reply