AMagill
Strobe controller
My strobe controller project finally got soldered up in a nice project case. In short, it's a programmable strobe controller for high-speed photography. You can load it with simple scripts to (usually) wait for a certain input condition, and then switch the outputs with very precise timing.
One particularly elaborate example: Have it trigger an electronic water valve for a few milliseconds, just long enough to let one drop of water through. Wait until it sees a drop fall through a photogate, and then open the shutter on the camera. Wait until the contact mic under a bowl is triggered by the drop impacting on the bowl, fire the flash, wait a few milliseconds, and then close the shutter on the camera. Perfect water drop pictures every time.
I bought a Koala protoboard, a matching case, and a compatible LiPoly battery from Sparkfun, plus a whole bunch of 3.5mm headphone jacks and some other odds and ends from JB Saunders, and soldered it up last weekend.
The board is pretty cool- it comes with USB-serial (an FTDI FT232R, regulated 3.3V and 5V from battery or USB, and battery charging from USB. The battery is tucked under the board.
Everything is wired into a TI EZ430-RF2500 target board (I really only wanted the MSP430-F2274 micro on it; the wireless is going to waste at the moment). It communicates with a desktop app I've written in C#, where you can see and control its status in real-time, write scripts, and send them to the device. I've created a simple little scripting language (and corresponding bytecode language) so the device can do interesting and precisely-timed things with its outputs (the five jacks on bottom) in reaction to stuff happening on its inputs (the button and the two other jacks). It needs some polish still, but it really works quite well.
I'll do a proper writeup on my website when I'm closer to being truly done.
Strobe controller
My strobe controller project finally got soldered up in a nice project case. In short, it's a programmable strobe controller for high-speed photography. You can load it with simple scripts to (usually) wait for a certain input condition, and then switch the outputs with very precise timing.
One particularly elaborate example: Have it trigger an electronic water valve for a few milliseconds, just long enough to let one drop of water through. Wait until it sees a drop fall through a photogate, and then open the shutter on the camera. Wait until the contact mic under a bowl is triggered by the drop impacting on the bowl, fire the flash, wait a few milliseconds, and then close the shutter on the camera. Perfect water drop pictures every time.
I bought a Koala protoboard, a matching case, and a compatible LiPoly battery from Sparkfun, plus a whole bunch of 3.5mm headphone jacks and some other odds and ends from JB Saunders, and soldered it up last weekend.
The board is pretty cool- it comes with USB-serial (an FTDI FT232R, regulated 3.3V and 5V from battery or USB, and battery charging from USB. The battery is tucked under the board.
Everything is wired into a TI EZ430-RF2500 target board (I really only wanted the MSP430-F2274 micro on it; the wireless is going to waste at the moment). It communicates with a desktop app I've written in C#, where you can see and control its status in real-time, write scripts, and send them to the device. I've created a simple little scripting language (and corresponding bytecode language) so the device can do interesting and precisely-timed things with its outputs (the five jacks on bottom) in reaction to stuff happening on its inputs (the button and the two other jacks). It needs some polish still, but it really works quite well.
I'll do a proper writeup on my website when I'm closer to being truly done.