Jason has been messing around with electronic design and micro-processor coding lately and decided to try his hand at creating me a sound trigger to set off my flash for photography. Tonight we got to play with a test run of his first pass by popping balloons. The equipment used was a Nikon D-80 on a tripod; one Nikor SB-600 flash mounted to a separate stand, camera right, which was attached to the built device - an
Arduino based ATMega 328 micro-controller on a custom breadboard. We only had a handful of balloons to test with (I will be buying more tomorrow) so we documented the results below. Once he gets this one sorted out he will being working on a visual sensor for me for my bird photography, which I will also document. Once I get some more test material, I will also be updating with more photos and test runs, hopefully with some better focusing! ;)
Feel free to ask questions in the comments section for any setup or Arduino related questions - one of us will answer depending on the subject of the question.
This is the Arduino breadboard build - SB600 to the left - AC adapter to the right:
Balloon Pop #1 (you can see the controller board sitting on his lap) :
Balloon Pop #2 (yes, it caught me off-guard - it was dark and I wasn't sure when it was going to pop - ha!) :
Balloon Pop #3 Closeup - splits right down the middle! :
