DIY Photography

Your one stop shop for everything photo-video

  • News
  • Inspiration
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • DIY
  • Gear
Search

Submit A Story

How to Trigger 6 Strobes With A Single Slave

Oct 29, 2012 by Udi Tirosh Leave a Comment

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Six flashes ganged up with ONE trigger

If you are using multiple strobes as a strobank (yes, strobank is a word) you may have stumbled on the issue of triggering. Triggering one strobe is one thing, but triggering a hole bank is a bit more challenging.

The naive way to do it is to try and use a trigger splitter, in a similar way to a headphone splitter. This will probably work with 2, maybe 3 strobes, but what if you have 6 strobes or more lined up? You should just split it into 6 right? wrong. Most triggers just not enough juice in them to close the circuit on more than two strobes. So for six strobes it would take 3 slaves.

Of course there are several other ways you can make 6 strobes work together, and it pretty much depends on what slave mechanism they have and how similar they are. If all the strobes employ optical slaves, there is a good chance that you can trigger one strobe and have all the other strobes slaves feed of that.

But if they don’t have optical slaves, you would need to trigger them individually.

The cool way to do it, is to build a PCB that can take up to 6 strobes and trigger them all together. Here is the front view of the photograph we have at the beginning of the post.

Six flashes ganged up with ONE trigger

That little PCB in the middle is what splits one slave into 6 yongnuo strobes.

Peter Y Lin shared the schematics, rational and even PCB diagrams for this kind of splitting device. If you own a Foursquare you will appreciate it.

Here is what the circuit looks like from up close:

DIY Safe and Fast One Trigger Multiple Flashes Device

Here is the electronic bits if you are interested:

Theory:

Most, if not all, manual radio/optical trigger works by pulling the
center pin to ground, creating a short in flash’s circuitry, hence
triggering the flash. Knowing this, we can use a logic IC with enough
buffering capability to drive simple transistors to trigger multiple
flashes. Here, I am using CMOS HC logic gate series because

1. it works under wide range of voltage,
2. it has 10+mA driving capability, enough to drive a transistor
3. input impedence is high, so tying up six gates does not create too
much burden on the input.
4. it is FAST, response time is usually quoted in nano-seconds

So, as you can see in the schematics, the input is tied up to high so
all outputs of 74HC04 is low. When input trigger pulls down the input
pin, all outputs become HIGH, thus driving transistors to short. #

P.S. here is a nice bonus, if you have 7 of those boards and 36 strobes, you can connect them together to fire all 36 strobes simultaneously. It does not say if you can fire 216 strobes together.

FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Related posts:

Default ThumbnailDIY – Universal Sound and Optical Slave Flash Trigger Default ThumbnailHow To Trigger And Waterproof Strobes Under Water how to trigger nikon from canon pocket wizard flex tt5 how to trigger canon from nikon pocket wizard flex tt5 tutorial jp danko toronto commercial photographerPocket Wizard Flex TT5: How To Trigger Nikon Flash With Canon or Trigger Canon Flash With Nikon Default ThumbnailRadio Slave Triggers – PocketWizard Review – Part 1

Filed Under: Tutorials

Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.net

About Udi Tirosh

Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

« How To Upgrade A Canon Lens
Win A SlideTracked Time Lapse System »

Submit A Story

Get our FREE Lighting Book

DIYP lighting book cover

* download requires newsletter signup

Recent Comments

Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

Learn photography

Recent Posts

  • AstrHori new 28mm f/13 2x Macro Periscope lens sees round corners
  • Sony World Photography Awards under fire for age limitations in Student contest
  • 5 ways to find inspiration when the weather is sad and grey
  • Photographers, keep an eye out for auroras around the world this weekend
  • How to make beautiful frozen soap bubble photos this winter

Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.netUdi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

Alex Baker: from diyphotography.netAlex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

David Williams: from diyphotography.netDave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred: from diyphotography.netJohn Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic: from diyphotography.netDunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

Copyright © DIYPhotography 2006 - 2023 | About | Contact | Advertise | Write for DIYP | Full Disclosure | Privacy Policy