I am sitting here smiling like an absolute idiot and just need to share the excitement with somebody. I recently was looking for some inspiration in photography and bumped into Matt Richardson’s video on how to make a sound-activated flash trigger for high-speed photography (such as pictures of a bullet going through something, or a glass being shattered) based on Arduino chip.

I realize for some, this may not be a reason for much excitement and Arduino chips are nothing new to them, but keep in mind, I’m no engineer, I barely understand electronics, but i do like little DIY projects.

Because the trigger is Arduino-based I can just write code to perform tasks (turning off lights then arming the trigger then waiting for the sound, triggering the flash, closing the shutter and turning the lights back on)

I’ve never heard of Arduino before, and yesterday after getting it in the mail, I started reading up on it, was playing around, and that thing is amazing – I just can’t believe how easy it is for somebody who doesn’t know the inner workings of IC to make that chip perform tasks according to program. I have not assembled the trigger yet, but I did figure out how the Arduino needs to be connected to the rest of the parts by looking at the code and i got all the parts working – Now it’s just a matter of putting it all together.

Now I have whole winter to figure out what kind of Arduino-based mod to make for my bike. Last winter, it was my own LED brake light repeater/blinker, this time, i’m getting into programmable stuff!