Recently I constructed the beam break trigger and photoflash trigger kits featured in Silicon Chip magazine. Both look good in general however I ran into an issue getting the beam break kit to work with the trigger because of the short duration of the output. I thought I’d share a letter I just wrote to Silicon Chip about the problem in case anyone else runs into the same problem before it’s published in print form:
After constructing the beam break trigger from the June 2009 issue I didn’t have any luck getting it to trigger a camera either directly or via the photoflash trigger kit. Unless I’m missing something doesn’t the 10nF coupling between Q1 and Q2 lead to a time constant of mere microseconds? I didn’t measure the timing before-hand but after doing a rough calculation I placed a 1uF cap over the 10nF which lead to a trigger time of somewhere in the order of 10mS and all was fine with the photoflash trigger kit. I left it at that because it’s my intention to use it with the trigger kit however readers should be aware that some cameras require a longer pulse on their external trigger to fire. For example my Canon EOS 450D seems to require a minimum duration of about 60mS in manual focus mode, presumably if the pulse is shorter than the normal shutter lag time it gets ignored. Other than that they are a pair of excellent projects and looking forward to exploring the possibilities they offer.