DIY Hotshoe interface

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BugEZ
Posts: 850
Joined: Sat Mar 26, 2011 7:15 pm
Location: Loves Park Illinois

DIY Hotshoe interface

Post by BugEZ »

I needed to detect that the shutter had opened to trigger a pulse of LED illumination for my stacking rig. The hotshoe contacts were designed to trigger a flash and would suit my purpose.

I constructed a simple hot shoe connector from an old credit card. The folded sandwich slides into the hotshoe bracket and wires emerge from the sandwich plastic face to engage the appropriate contacts on the hotshoe pad. I measured where the tirgger wire needed to emerge to mate the contact on the hoteshoe pad. I installed it and checked the contunity on the wire leads as the shutter cycled. I hooked it to my LED pulse controller and was in business.

I ended up making a simpler hotshoe connector for a different rig. This one not folded. Both have worked reliably. A bit fidgety for field kit, but perfectly fine for my basement studio where things are not disturbed. Proper hotshoe connectors can be purchased that are an excellent option, but I was in a hurry and wanterd one quickly.

Keith


Image
Attachments
connector 1.JPG
connector 1 a.JPG
contact 1 b.JPG
contact 1 c.JPG
connecter 2 a.JPG
connector 2 b.JPG

Chris S.
Site Admin
Posts: 4042
Joined: Sun Apr 05, 2009 9:55 pm
Location: Ohio, USA

Re: DIY Hotshoe interface

Post by Chris S. »

Keith,

Thanks for sharing this, as well as your other recent posts.

During the past few days, I've looked to see if there exist hot shoe adapters with terminal blocks for wiring. So far, I haven't seen any. (Though there are hot shoe adapters with PC outlets; these would work, but would likely be fiddly and fault prone.)

In the end, I'll likely do something like what you did here.

Cheers,

--Chris S.

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