Thanks for the help Mathieu!
The whole idea is to take pictures of water drops.
I plan to use:
- a solenoid for controlling flow of water drops eletronically
- a photogate laser trigger (already have this working)
- a loudspeaker and amplifier (my hometheater subwoofer, I need a simpler speaker
) - camera and high speed flashes (have that too)
Steps:
- Arduino activates camera on long exposure (3 seconds), that should be easy, I plan to use a 4N28 optocoupler
- Arduino activates solenoid (another optocoupler), that produces a water drop
- The falling drop crosses a laser beam (it turns on the SCR from my original question here)
- Arduino detects the SCR close, then wait X miliseconds
- Arduino activates the loudspeaker... it has another water drop on top of it
- Arduino waits Y miliseconds
- Arduino activates a wireless flash trigger, that activates multiple flashes (another optocoupler)
By adjusting X and Y miliseconds, I plan to capture the exact moment the 2 waterdrops splash on each other.
I was able to make it work separate... now I want it togheter... Here's some results:
Using a sound trigger, activated by loudspeaker, with a delay to wait the waterdrop formation:
A waterdrop on a US dime 0.10 cent coin, falling from 2 feet, detected by laser:
I did both photos ![]()
The only thing missing for my whole setup is connecting everything togheter on Arduino to get miliseconds precision, I'm tired of adjusting delays on potentiometers... and the solenoid I just started researching.