Disposable camera flash driver circuit

The flash capacitor can store charge for a long time, and should be discharged before handling the circuit. This oscillating action produces the high-pitch whine you hear when a flash is charging up.

Flash capacitor from a regular point-and-shoot camera. Digilentinc Design Challenge: trend learn. The disposable camera we will be working with can generate V. During the flash discharge, parts of the circuit can very briefly reach to V. Camera White Led Flash Illumination. In my camera the flash was powered by a 1. The primary output is easy , a xenon-filled flash tube produces a flash of light. It takes over 10 kilovolts to fire this tube.

The electronic circuit produces this high voltage. Find the flash tube which should be surrounded by a metal I have borrowed liberally from the above material in designing this laboratory exercise. Note to Instructors. Equipment List Five workstations: Disposable camera with flash. Two Keithley digital Photo-Flash Electronic Circuits tip www. A charge control circuit turns off the high voltage generator when the photoflash capacitor is fully charged.

A neon lamp is included to indicate when the system is ready to flash. Disposable Camera Coil Gun! Your browser indicates if you've visited this link But often — if you're careful — this curiosity pays off and you wind up learning how to make something cool like this coil gun from a camera flash Sound Activated Flash For High Speed PhotographyYour browser indicates if you've visited this link [Bassam] started off by taking apart a disposable camera for the flash bulb and capacitor.

Kodak Theater moments at the ESPYsYour browser indicates if you've visited this link struggling to keep up on Sunset Boulevard, knowing that my put-put car is the goofy, "you're-not-from-around-here" equivalent of black socks, madras shorts, a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and a camera Related Videos. High voltage from disposable camera. Video result. Disposable camera plus CFL Thanks for yr advice. Yes I did test it and it does produce about 4 volts inside for a well lit window.

I have tried several capacitors, but apparently the only value that works for me is 0 Farad and even then it is not very sensitive. How much Volt should it produce to work properly? The solar cell is producing more than enough voltage. Make sure the polarity of the cell is correct, positive to capacitor. If you have already tried swapping out the capacitor and resistor, then it most likely is a SCR failure.

Thanks, yes polarity is correct. The SCR is working if no capacitor. Anyway I will try with another SCR. Thanks for the advice. Low and behold, a different SCR seems to have done the trick. Odd, as the first one I tried was fresh from the shop.

I must honestly say that I did not expect this, but as the circuit apparently is successfully built by many people and the cell, resistor and capacitor were not the problem, well, then it must be the scr ;- Strange enough I have used it after the slave did not work in another project where it performs fine.

Perhaps less critical Thanks for your valuable advice. Like to add that also the sensitivity is great, reacts to bounced flash at least 4 meters away, even when the voltaic cell is pointing the other way. I am impressed. I played on your idea Divet and made a studio strobe. Reply 11 years ago on Introduction. I power it by batteries but I also have a plug in to run it off a plug in power pack as well. Thanks for your idea. I was able to use the flash jar with the camera in manual and the speedlite set to ASA25 f2.

I completed a 4 flash unit I will be using for a studio flash. I combined all the triggers to a common connection but the flash trigger I used does not trigger all the flash units. If I manually short the trigger wire, all four flashes fire. I am going to try adding one or more Carl Vogt triggers to see if that helps. I can add a picture or two as soon as I tidy up the finished product.

Thanks again for the amazing project. Otherwise it seems the flash jar doesn't like to syc with the camera even when using the speedlite. I need to play around with the camera, the speedlite and the flash jar more.

I made a second jar now. I have the orientation of the flash to the photocell set up in such a way that one jar is for right hand flash and the other is left hand flash.

This is a great project. I also noticed there was a posting for a peanut butter jar slave flash. Is this by the same author? I made two of the jar flashes and am very pleased with the performance and portability. Reply 11 years ago on Introduction.

Its from around and the batteries last quite a while :. I was bored of the only thing people where doing with these disposable camera ; A dumb tazer But that project is much better! There's no guarantee that the flash unit is still good or that the battery still has a charge chances are good though. There should be a button on the front to activate the flash charging circuit.

Go ahead and press that. You should hear the whine of the capacitor charging and after a bit you should see the indicator LED light up on the back. You should NOT have to hold the front button down. If the capacitor won't charge without the button being held down, toss the camera and find another. With the back off, you should see a small sprocket just under the view hole and above the rectangular cavity. The film advance wheel should spin easily since there is no film inside.

When there is film in the camera and you advance the film with the wheel, the teeth on the edge of the film spin the small sprocket. This action resets the release button.

You should feel the tension build and then the sprocket should lock once the release button is set. Now press the release button. You should see a flash. Replace the battery with a fresh one and repeat.

Remove the battery and trigger the flash again. Carefully pull the front body section out and it should click off. This will free the internal frame and circuitry from the front panel. Battery Pack closed. Solder wires from the battery clips of the most reliable flash to the external battery case.

This flash will be the trigger flash. Hot glue the flash into position in cookie tin. Solder the trigger wires from the flash to the phone jack. Plug in the RD wireless trigger into the jack and test. Hot glue velcro to the outside of the cookie tin to hold the RD in place. Hot glue the slave near the trigger flash. Solder the second flash to the slave and the battery pack and test. Do the same with the third and fourth flash.

Mounting with hot glue. Note — all three flashes are popped by one flash. Phone jack attached to trigger. And schematics again. When everything is working, bolt on the dog dish and camera mount. Split one side of the rubber tubing and cover the edges of the inner hole to protect the camera lens. At 8 feet you should get about F5. Bare cookie tin popping.

Complete assembly. Additional modifications could be adding 4 more flashes or making a wax paper diffuser for the front of the ring. Use any leftover flashes to build a peanut butter jar strobe, a simple disposable camera slave. So what do you do with any flashes left over from making the ring flash?

Building a couple of peanut butter jar strobes is an option. The flash of one jar is controlled by a RD, the other by a slave. Udi Tirosh is the Founder and Editor in Chief of DIYPhotography, he is also a photographer, a relentless entrepreneur, a prolific inventor and a dad, not necessarily in that order. John Aldred is based in Scotland and photographs people in the wild and animals in the studio.