Just want to say thank you to JC for his wonderful RF12 arduino library.
It works really nice on my 1st ever microcontroller project, image here:
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2516/3907880763f285e906aab.jpg
SPOTduino flash wireless trigger
(8 posts) (4 voices)-
Posted 11/09/2009 04:06:22
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Great work bennyjo88. Looks like you pieced together a stripped down arduino and added your own RF12 module? How much did the RF12 cost you? Thanks!
Posted 22/02/2010 01:35:37 -
Wow... that looks pretty cool...
I've got two questions for you.... First, where did you find that antenna?
Second... What does this actually do?
Thanks!
KoryPosted 22/02/2010 23:59:05 -
Looks like the individual modules are about $8 ea.
@gali98 I think it's based on this project: http://talk.jeelabs.net/topic/5#post-8
Posted 23/02/2010 15:08:29 -
Very nice.
Where did you get the hotshoe ?Posted 24/02/2010 09:18:53 -
Hi all sorry for late reply..
@szac.. for HKG delivery, the rfm12b module is pretty cheap, around USD30, I got 10 pcs of them, so around USD3/pc. I think because their factory is in Shenzhen, and shipping cost is next to nothing from Shenzhen to Hong Kong.
@gali98.. I use 915MHz RFM12B module, so I can use the 900MHz cell phone antenna. You can get this antenna from www.dealextreme.com, SKU.5237 http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.5237. This thing allow me to trigger the flash off camera and also to manual control my flash power wirelessly (by controlling the quench timing).
@rubi.. the hotshoe I got from some old flash. But I think you can get the same from here: http://www.ez1photo.com/resources.html and also from ebay, just search on "vivitar 285hv hotshoe replacement"
Posted 07/04/2010 05:18:38 -
Dear JC (and other expert). I made this project to be able to trigger my flash off the camera and at the same time time be able to control the power of the flash. It works really good, the range is also excellent and very reliable, but I have problem with the flash sync speed. Normally an SLR camera can sync the flash up to 1/250sec even with a cheap "made in china" wireless flash trigger. With this project, i called SPOTduino, on my Canon EOS 40D, I cannot sync higher than 1/160sec. At 1/200sec got very thin dark area at the bottom and 1/250sec got half dark area (this is typical of out-of-sync flash problem). It is the same on my friend's Nikon D200, so I don't think the camera is the issue here.
My project is very simple, just use two BCD rotary switches. The 1st BCD switch for choosing the flash group and the 2nd BCD for setting up the power/quench timing. And two optocouplers to trigger the flash (on RX unit) and to trigger the quench signal. Then I only transmit two bytes to trigger the flash and to set the flash power on the receiver end.
I read from your article and HackADay, that Arduino's digitalRead and digitalWrite command is very slow, so after some google time, I found the C style replacement for these command, it works fine too in my SPOTduino, but unfortunately it still does not solve the problem with the sync speed. So I am back to scratching my head to find where the bottleneck is in the program.
Pls check below my Arduino script, appreciate very much if somebody can help me solve this problem. Thanks a lot.
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Posted 07/04/2010 06:06:27 -
EDITED - now at
Posted 07/04/2010 06:21:54