# Strobe lightning, does any one know a way??



## tattman98 (Jun 29, 2011)

Want to use a strobe for the lightning affect,but the strobe I have is one that constantly flashes. It does have the variable speed though,I thought a could leave the light on the highest setting for the pulsing affect, but only want the light to flash periodically. not quite sure how to set this up without buying an expensive light. And it is more fun trying to figure it out. ANY HELP OUT THERE?


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## fritz42_male (May 5, 2009)

I link my strobe to a colour organ for a lightning effect. The colour organ is hooked up to a speaker/mp3 player combo.

An alternative would be to use a flicker candle to activate a solid state relay which in turn switches the strobe on and off. Search for 'tea light hack'

The best option with far more control of 'random' would be to use a little picaxe circuit and program it so that onlybrandom numbers over a certain level would trigger the strobe. The level could be set with a potentiometer giving you very fine control.


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## tattman98 (Jun 29, 2011)

Thanks for the info fritz-male this is going to come in very handy. Other possibilities have now popped up on this .


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## The Watcher (Sep 13, 2008)

You need a lightning box. There are all different kinds. But you plug your strobe and your thunder lightning sound in to it. Then it matches the speed and brightness of the strobe to the sounds. A color organ is what they really are. Like this.

Amazon.com: Perfect Storm Lightning Effects Kit: Home & [email protected]@[email protected]@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/[email protected]@[email protected]@21lEAzQiVqL


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## R. Lamb (Oct 11, 2011)

Gotta go with The Watcher here. I invested in a Firefly 501 and I love it. It also sincs my lights up to the sound.


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## stagehand1975 (Feb 22, 2010)

I have a 750 watt strobe and it just blows every other strobe away. But it is a pro strobe and I controll it with its own.controller. color organs.work good, even.a.prop.controller. my first prop controller was use for just lights and sound. A fright ideas picoboo 105. It has outlets and an internal sound chip. I set it up on a motion sensor and recorded thunder on the controller. Pluged in a couple strobes and programmed a random flashing patern into the 2 channels. Plug the audio into some large speakers. When it would set off, it would be lightning and loud thunder heard over every other sound in the scene. Fully automatic and enough to make a few kids run to the stop sign.


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## tattman98 (Jun 29, 2011)

The Watcher said:


> You need a lightning box. There are all different kinds. But you plug your strobe and your thunder lightning sound in to it. Then it matches the speed and brightness of the strobe to the sounds. A color organ is what they really are. Like this.
> 
> Amazon.com: Perfect Storm Lightning Effects Kit: Home & Kitchen


Ok and this also works with an A/C strobe light ? I have battery powered strobes don't really care for them,they are just cheap ones.


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## typoagain (Feb 27, 2012)

The Watcher said:


> You need a lightning box. There are all different kinds. But you plug your strobe and your thunder lightning sound in to it. Then it matches the speed and brightness of the strobe to the sounds. A color organ is what they really are. Like this.
> 
> Amazon.com: Perfect Storm Lightning Effects Kit: Home & Kitchen


That not a bad price for something that will do what it does.


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## tattman98 (Jun 29, 2011)

Yeah, I thought that was a fairly cheap price to am going to think about that real hard.
Might go ahead and make the purchase and do some experiments with it.


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## QueenRuby2002 (Oct 23, 2011)

I know this might sound a little simple I'm not very advance on things yet. (okay so I had to have my mom exsplain Numatices in laymens terms) Anyhow Last year we had lights and a siren set to a compersion switch. Kids steped on it and the cars lights came on and a loud siren. Depeneding on what your doing and the money you want to spened it wouldn't be to hard to do the same thing with your strop. You could even use a laser trigger. Not sure how to pull it off but I think you could put a timer on it to make the effect last longer. Just a thought.


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## craigfly06 (May 11, 2012)

That is a real neat box. Would you use it outside or inside? I think it would be cool if you could put lights near the windows and have them flash. I just do the yard decorating, dont do the inside or garage haunt. Is this just for strobe lights or regular lights. Sorry if these are elementary questions , I am fairly new to this bussiness!


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## The Watcher (Sep 13, 2008)

craigfly06 said:


> That is a real neat box. Would you use it outside or inside? I think it would be cool if you could put lights near the windows and have them flash. I just do the yard decorating, dont do the inside or garage haunt. Is this just for strobe lights or regular lights. Sorry if these are elementary questions , I am fairly new to this bussiness!


I don't know of any of these boxes that are water proof. But you can set it inside and run a drop cord to the lights. Also for your sound you don't want your radio or cd outside either. If the weather is nice you can use the box out side. Think of it as any regular electronics. The best thing about these boxes is the cause the flash not only to be in sync with thunder and lighting. But they control the brightness of the light. Dim to medium during thunder and bright flash during the lighting boom. They can be used with regular spot light bulbs or Photo bulbs. Hope this helps.


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## goneferal (Sep 8, 2010)

As a migraine sufferer, I can't do strobes and would never do one in my haunt. Strobe lights can be really dangerous to some people.


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## tattman98 (Jun 29, 2011)

goneferal said:


> As a migraine sufferer, I can't do strobes and would never do one in my haunt. Strobe lights can be really dangerous to some people.


I have taken this into consideration, the strobe would not be on constant flash it would only flash on a periodic basis. I don't think this will cause a problem,as the customer would be walking through at a brisk pace. therefore the chance of vertigo would be minimal.


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