Modding Poon's Wireless Flash Trigger

[Yi-P]

While having nothing much to do over the weekend, I ended up playing around with Poon's wireless flash trigger.

For the amount you pay delivered to your door, it certainly beats all other alternatives by a fair distance. But the receiver only provides a 3.5mm mono jack to trigger studio strobes, can't trigger speelights. So I came up with a rough idea of making it work with a speedlight.

Things you'd need:
- Male PC-Sync cable
- Female 3.5mm mono/stereo plug
- Soldering Iron and solder
- Soldering skills/knowledge

When I bought my studio lights, it came with a PC-Sync to 3.5mm sync cable. I have two of these and only need one at max. So I took one out to sacrifice a PC-Sync plug.
I cut off the sync cable at about 8cm and strip out the insulators.


There should be another layer of insulator inside which holds the 2nd wire. I strip it out and separated the two wires.


The centre wire should correspond to the central pin in the PC-Sync plug, and the outer wire is the circular piece in the plug. Or I assume it is (+) Positive and (-) Negative terminals.
Opening up the 3.5mm stereo plug, you'll find a long (negative/ground) metal piece along with two shorter (positive) metal pieces on the connector. I plugged in the wireless receiver and checked both shorter terminals and they both are reading the same thing, so I guess its ok to just use one of them. In case if it's different, just short them both with a small piece of metal or wire.

Solder the positive (central wire) into the positive terminal of the 3.5mm plug, and the negative (outer wire) into the negative terminal. It should look something like this (I wasnt lucky enough to find the black 3.5mm plug, red looks cool too):

Cut off the excessive wires and check the solder joints. Then put the cap back on... and you're DONE!!

It should now look like this:


Then, its now time to put it on the test!! A little velcro stickers or some sticky dots will hold the wireless receiver in place with the flash.

Now, the completed result, nice and clean:







Total cost, <$1.00 (If you have the sync cable and soldering tools already)
+
20minutes time
+
1 hour of just having fun with this thing...

Now this thing works for every camera that has a hot shoe mount and flash unit that has a PC-Sync socket.

Any questions/comments welcomed

[Matt. K]

Wonderful post Yi-P! A very useful tip. For those members who don't have the skills or confidence to do this....would you be able to do it for a moderate fee? That would provide you with a small income and the forum with a valuable service.

[gstark]

Thanx for this; very useful. It's reminiscent of a custom cable I had to make many years ago, to drive a Metz CT45, and later a Metz CT60, from two cameras in parallel. I think I still have the one for the 45.

While having nothing much to do over the weekend, I ended up playing around with Poon's wireless flash trigger.

For the amount you pay delivered to your door, it certainly beats all other alternatives by a fair distance. But the receiver only provides a 3.5mm mono jack to trigger studio strobes, can't trigger speelights. So I came up with a rough idea of making it work with a speedlight.

Things you'd need:
- Male PC-Sync cable
- Female 3.5mm mono/stereo plug
- Soldering Iron and solder
- Soldering skills/knowledge

Actually, that's a socket that you've used, and as a general point of observation, it's probably best to use a mono one.

But otherwise, this is a very simple project that requires just a very basic level of soldering skill to complete.

Well done.

[Yi-P]

Wonderful post Yi-P! A very useful tip. For those members who don't have the skills or confidence to do this....would you be able to do it for a moderate fee? That would provide you with a small income and the forum with a valuable service.

Yeah, that's all fine, I'm happy to help any member here who needs a solution like this. All they need to bring in is a PC-Sync cable if they have one, otherwise I got to order one somewhere. I think this can also be done at spare times of our DSLRU meets

Actually, that's a socket that you've used, and as a general point of observation, it's probably best to use a mono one.

Yes, that's right. I only found a stereo socket, and its red as well...
But you're right, a mono socket is easier to hook up, no need to do any multimeter tests.

[PiroStitch]

Yi-P, have you tested the range on that wireless flash outdoors? Would be interested to see how it goes.

Thanks for posting this mod up by the way.

Cheers,

Wayne

[marcotrov]

Great work Yi-P. Very handy indeed. At the moment i use SU-800. VEry limited use outdoors. Would be great to see how your contraption functions as Wayne has suggested. I can see a review coming on Yi-P
cheers
marco

[Big V]

Cool tip - thanks

[colin_12]

Nice effort Yi-p.
Thanks for posting it up.
Regards Colin

[Yi-P]

Yi-P, have you tested the range on that wireless flash outdoors? Would be interested to see how it goes.

Thanks for posting this mod up by the way.

Cheers,

Wayne

Wayne, I wasn't able to do a field outdoor test, but I was testing it out today at a food court (indoor). The measured effective range is about 12-15m. Anything behind 15m is hit and miss, more of a miss tho.

I'll try on my next DIY project on improving the range of this little thing

[PiroStitch]

15m is pretty decent. How was the hit rate?

I'm wondering how these little things hold up against the Cactus triggers. If they're more robust then it's definitely a recommendation I'd be putting in, pc sync or no pc sync.

[surenj]

Any ideas on how to mod it so one can fix it to a hot shoe of a CANON flash??

Thanks for a great post

[Grev]

I always adore improvisation skills.

[Yi-P]

Any ideas on how to mod it so one can fix it to a hot shoe of a CANON flash??

Thanks for a great post

I would either buy a simple 'hot-shoe' adaptor in those camera shops, but they cost quite a lot IMO.

My way was to buy a $3 eBay "Optical slave sync" with a hot-shoe mount. Costs $10 delivered.

I got one of these and opened this little thing up to look around and should be easy enough to hook it up to a remote (just 2 wires inside). No, I haven't done this mod yet.

If you go crazy enough, there is a way to put a 3.5mm socket into a canon flash, but you need to disassemble the flash and drill a hole and solder some stuffs inside the flash.

[jamesw]

Great work Yi-P. Very handy indeed. At the moment i use SU-800. VEry limited use outdoors. Would be great to see how your contraption functions as Wayne has suggested. I can see a review coming on Yi-P
cheers
marco

remember to compare apples with apples, your su800 communicates ttl information to the slave flashes... these triggers (and any other radio trigger) will not. this makes nikon speedlights a very expensive alternative to much more basic flashes that you can set on auto or manual to light a scene. vivitar 285s and sunpak 383s provide similar flash power at 1/3 of the cost, minus the ttl.

just food for thought.

(you may already be aware of this, but others reading may not)

[Takehiko]

Any particular reason you didn't just put the the PC sync plug directly on the end of the trigger wire instead? I'm considering doing something similar with my Gadget Infinity 16 channels and just doing some research before I try it.

--Brian

[gstark]

Any particular reason you didn't just put the the PC sync plug directly on the end of the trigger wire instead? I'm considering doing something similar with my Gadget Infinity 16 channels and just doing some research before I try it.

--Brian

Hi Brian,

And welcome.

There would be no reason why this could not be done. If you read through some of the comments in this thread, you will see that Yip simply grabbed a few things that he had lying around the house, and while I don't speak on his behalf in this, my guess is that it's as simple as that: it's what was lying around at the time, so it was used.

[Yi-P]

Any particular reason you didn't just put the the PC sync plug directly on the end of the trigger wire instead? I'm considering doing something similar with my Gadget Infinity 16 channels and just doing some research before I try it.

--Brian

Hi Brian,

And welcome.

There would be no reason why this could not be done. If you read through some of the comments in this thread, you will see that Yip simply grabbed a few things that he had lying around the house, and while I don't speak on his behalf in this, my guess is that it's as simple as that: it's what was lying around at the time, so it was used.

Yep, that is correct. I opened up my tool box. "Ahh, this can do... oh, this too" and this is how the finished product came in. It is better idea to use a black mono 3.5mm socket, but the red one is what appeared in the box. Oh well, it works for me. Red = don't touch...

[Takehiko]

Yep, that is correct. I opened up my tool box. "Ahh, this can do... oh, this too" and this is how the finished product came in. It is better idea to use a black mono 3.5mm socket, but the red one is what appeared in the box. Oh well, it works for me. Red = don't touch...

Great! Thanks for the info guys!

[surenj]

Does any one know whether POONS triggers work with the canon flashes? 430EX etc.. I got some ebay triggers which interfere and keep firing spontaneouly...

[Yi-P]

Does any one know whether POONS triggers work with the canon flashes? 430EX etc.. I got some ebay triggers which interfere and keep firing spontaneouly...

As long as the flash has a PC-Sync terminal, it should work using the method described in this thread. I'm not familiar with canon flashes, but usually they should have one...

[the foto fanatic]

Thanks for posting this, Yip.

I recently had to get hold of 3 X 3.5mm jack to PC Sync cords for my Skyports.

I only needed short cords, and locally the minimum seemed to be 5 metres for about $35!

I finally got 30 cm ones (for about A$7 each) from this eBay seller, who seems to have a whole bunch of cables of differing types for sale. There were no problems with the transaction:

http://search.stores.ebay.com.au/Fotota ... 93QQsofpZ0

[adam]

I also got mine from ebay, but while waiting for them to arrive I wired together an 2.5mm socket to 3.5mm jack adaptor to make use of the 2.5mm jack to pc-sync cable that came with it.

[surenj]

Has anyone used POON's trigger with CANON flashes? There is an interference problem with the one's that I got from ebay... Thanks

[Dprime]

Yi-P, have you tested the range on that wireless flash outdoors? Would be interested to see how it goes.

Thanks for posting this mod up by the way.

Cheers,

Wayne

I'll try on my next DIY project on improving the range of this little thing

I remember a friend of mine mentioning that he pulled apart the cheap receivers he got off ebay and and soldered a wire into the receiver, which was then connected to a rather large (and ugly) chunk of metal hanging outside it (I think it was copper) and he had surprisingly noticeable results for its range, so that might be a good start.

[surenj]

plenty of ways to increase range!

http://martybugs.net/reviews/cactus.cgi

Scroll to the bottom of the above page and there is about 10 links that will help you increase the range by doing various mods.

Suren