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I am preparing a new sculpture on the topic of book burning. It employs six books hung on the wall in grid fashion. Each book has a commercial Simplex strobe signaling fire alarm set into its cover. A video on book burning will be projected onto the grid. I need the strobe lights on the six alarms to flash intermittently and randomly throughout the video presentation. I want to run the alarms off of battery packs set into each book so that there are no wires showing. The operating range for each alarm is 16-33 vdc. The alarm strobe light fires only when the current pulses off so I assume there is a capacitor (?) in the circuit board of each alarm loading up and discharging on the power pulses. I presume I would need a remote control activating device and switches in each book to cause the strobes to flash but I am at a loss as to how to structure the system to cause the alarms to only fire intermittently ( a constant strobing would be too disruptive of the video) and to fire randomly throughout the six units. Any thoughts or solutions would be much appreciated. Thanks.
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sculptural piece using nine commercial strobe fire alarms
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Posted 08 July 2008 - 11:02 AM
Robert,
You need to define the strobe circuitry so that it is under control of a logic signal. If you replace the strobe with a lamp then you can use a logic level MOSFET or relay connected between the lamp and the ground return. A simple controller like a BASIC Stamp (search Google for Parallax BS2) can be programmed to randomly fire the strobes.
I'm not sure how your strobe lights work, which is why I repalced them with lamps in my concept. If your strobes work like lamps (i.e. apply a voltage across them and they light) then you can use a similar "on switch". If they require a high voltage pulse, then it may get more complicated.
Lon
You need to define the strobe circuitry so that it is under control of a logic signal. If you replace the strobe with a lamp then you can use a logic level MOSFET or relay connected between the lamp and the ground return. A simple controller like a BASIC Stamp (search Google for Parallax BS2) can be programmed to randomly fire the strobes.
I'm not sure how your strobe lights work, which is why I repalced them with lamps in my concept. If your strobes work like lamps (i.e. apply a voltage across them and they light) then you can use a similar "on switch". If they require a high voltage pulse, then it may get more complicated.
Lon
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