Hi everybody,
I'm working right now on an IR trigger project for high speed photography. For this, I get the help of my father and boyfriend who know a lot more than me in electronics. I have very basic knowledge of that kind of stuff so I can explain a bit the project.

The project is at the ''Test'' stage. This will not be the final circuit for many reasons.

This is the global circuit:



At the left is the IR sensor, in the middle is the delay circuit and at the left is the potentiometer that allows to adjust the delay between the detection by the IR sensor and the flash. As you see, the IR transmitter is really near of the receiver, that means objects that falls have to be small. The final version of the project will have a way larger space than that.

This is my setup in general (the K-x should be were the tripod is... but I used it to take that photo...)



On this you see the AF540 mounted on a Yongnuo RF602 receiver. When I take the shots, the light are closed and the room is really dark so the only exposure comes from the flash which is set on 1/32 power. This way, the exposure time is very short.

Finally the circuit is linked to the RF602 transmitter:



It was very hard to adjust the delay correctly but I managed to do so. I was very far from the milk bowl and took some shots and determined if the delay had to be increased or decreased. Than, It happened to be correct when I got that shot:



Since I'm using only one flash (A cheap Yongnuo flash is on the way from China), my shots are not perfect. So here are some.





There are more on my flickr if that interest you.

I will post updates when I make some improvement on my project.
Thanks for looking.

[Rense]

Wow, great effort! I would like to try this myself SO MUCH !

[jolepp]

You might want to consider a combination of two potentiometers one for coarse and one for fine adjustment: these would be connected in series, the coarse would be the present one and the fine another with, say, a ~1/30th of the resistance. Initially you'd set the fine in the middle, get in the ballpark with the coarse and then fine tune. Another option could be a potentiometer which takes multiple turns to cover its whole range.

[miss_alexx]

You might want to consider a combination of two potentiometers one for coarse and one for fine adjustment: these would be connected in series, the coarse would be the present one and the fine another with, say, a ~1/30th of the resistance. Initially you'd set the fine in the middle, get in the ballpark with the coarse and then fine tune. Another option could be a potentiometer which takes multiple turns to cover its whole range.

Thanks for the idea! Will talk with my father about that.

[Ex Finn.]

Nice setup, results look good.
That first milk-splash shot is way cool.

[BillM]

That is way cool Alex, jolepp's ideal sounds pretty good, think Radio Shack
still carries npn thermistor (Dad & Friend know about I bet). Add to coarse
adj. as jolepp suggest and will stabilize for temperature drift because of components
self heating and other enviromental factors. Would probably give you resolution
on fine adjustment that with expirence and use be able to make an easy, indexed
scale, give it alot of portability. Real cheap too.
Really like the shots your making, hope you get the guys to help with clean-up