Making a foot switch remote trigger for £10*
I have been looking for a way to split the triggering of my remote camera (usually behind the goal) from my short lens camera. Usually I'll have a Pocket Wizard (PW) on the top of my 70-200 lensed camera and whenever I press the shutter on that, the remote camera fires as well.
This is generally OK, but you do end up with a lot of dross on the remote. Also it's often nice to fire the remote at times when the short lens camera isn't in use. I've also had problems where the remote doesn't fire at full throttle due to connection issues with the PW on the hotshoe, or I've knocked the PW it's disconnected/broken off etc etc.
The obvious answer is a foot switch. Simple enough, buy one of these from Maplin. Make sure it is the "moment" version i.e. the circuit is made for as long as you hold the switch down, and broken when you release the switch. £7.99 to you.
You'll notice the plug is too big for the Pocket Wizard, so cut it off and replace it with a 3.5mm mono plug. Polarity is irrelevant.
Ta-daaa! Sorted. Well, not quite. When you plug it into your PW, you'll find that the PW only triggers once when the switch is depressed, and once when the switch is released. This is despite the circuit being made (closed) all the while the switch is depressed. This is regardless of whether you plug it into the "camera/flash" socket on the PM, or the "flash" socket. That's not what I expected at all.
Sitting on the sideline with my foot jiggling up and down like a demented nervous weirdo to trigger 10 frames per second isn't an acceptable proposition. I just want the PW to trigger all the while the foot switch is pressed, in the same way it does while the PW's "test" switch is pressed.
One solution I've heard of is some sort of "reverb" pedal from a music shop, that makes & breaks a connection rapidly. Sounds expensive, so let's not bother with that sort of nonsense. I feel some McGyvering coming on...
Ah yes, the test switch. Well, if that behaves how I want the foot switch to behave, why not wire the foot switch into the test switch. Excellent. Cue inept basic electronics and dismantling of precision components.
Removing the PW's cover by unscrewing the 5 screws (one is of a different thread - please note), and removing the batteries, reveals the innards. The "test" switch is the red blob in the middle of the circuit board.
Some fiddling with a few pieces of wire reveals that, making a circuit across the two test switch contacts on the left side in the picture above triggers the PW in the same way as if you pressed the test button. Spot on - that's just what I want. Some wire and solder later...
As you can see, I've soldered the trigger wire onto the back of the circuit board as the other side is a bit busy with componentry and it's simply easier to do it on the back. The batteries still fit OK.
Some further fiddling was required to route the wire around the case and around a couple of the screw pillars to prevent a tug on the wire pulling the connections apart. I made a slot in the outer PW case for the wire to exit from. I was going to put a nice 3.5mm socket into the case but my local Maplin didn't have any of those nice screw-in ones.
So, I used a female 3.5mm mono female socket connector which I soldered to the end of the trigger cable, and a male connector soldered to the end of the cable coming from the foot switch. You only need mono connectors, not stereo. Polarity is irrelevant - you just need to make the circuit.
This means I can easily separate the switch and the PW and keep using the PW in the normal fashion if I wanted to. Yes, I do need a new foot for this PW, which is the next job on the list.
And here's the finished article. A quick test (actually, I'd been testing all along as you do with these things) shows that it does what it says on the tin. Holding down the foot switch triggers the PW which triggers another PW which triggers the remote camera for as long as the switch is pressed.
Cracking stuff! Proper test tomorrow at Fulham v Norwich.Edit: the foot switch worked like a dream today. Absolutely spot on. Unfortunately Norwich lost 5-0 and there was no action in the Fulham goal at all (I was shooting Norwich). Still, proved the tech - super.
* OK, this assumes you already have a Pocket Wizard to butcher.