IR light source for CED chronograph

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junkdude

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Has anybody built an indoor IR light source for a CED chronograph, or the Shooring Chrony for that matter? If so, what was the LED wavelength used? $100 or so for a few LEDs and battery pack seems a bit excessive to me.
 
My Chrony works with a regular incandescent bulb.

Never tried it with my CED.
 
+1 for incandescent


I built a box with 2 x 60 watt incandescent bulbs and works good.

I did hear DC power instead of AC would give better results though.
 
junkdude said:
Has anybody built an indoor IR light source for a CED chronograph, or the Shooring Chrony for that matter? If so, what was the LED wavelength used? $100 or so for a few LEDs and battery pack seems a bit excessive to me.
Click to expand...
I haven't built one, but I know quite a bit about the IR LEDs. :) Their wavelength range and form are about the same, with 850nm being the average. I bet you CED or any other manufacturer won't be getting any 'special' IR LEDs - first, because there are none, and second, because the phototransistors used in sensors also have a wavelength form that's pretty standard - not because all the manufacturers decided to make it so, but because that's how semiconductors work. I'll skip the details, I'm sure I bored you enough already.

The bootom line: get yourself a couple of IR boards from dealextreme for under 5 bucks, power them with a 12V source, and be happy! Here's one (2boards, actually) for $3.46 shipped:
h ttp://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.31592
If you want to flood the hell with IR - for cheap night vision, maybe? - go with two of these for $6ea, but you'll need to do some soldering, change power source to a single LiIon cell, and connect a suitable resistor:
h ttp://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.14061

You'll also need a cheap 12V source. My choice: take apart a 'dead' LiIon laptop battery - one or two cells may be dead, but the rest will be good to go. You need 3 batteries in series to make a 12V source. Or, you you don't have any dead packs laying around, get two of these:
h ttp://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.5790

Charge them with this:
h ttp://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.1251

HTH.
 
I assumed we were talking aboiut shooting indoors, where the flourescent lights don't work with the Chrono. If you are shooting outside in the dark, whole different story. Never tried that and can't really say I think I ever would. Kind of like seeing what is down range when I am shooting.
 
Thanks everyone for your ideas. It was intended for shooting indoors under florescent lighting and something that avoided the need of an extension cord. I was thinking that the wavelength probably didn't make much difference but wasn't certain. I'll try the prebuilt board from dealextream and see how it goes.
 
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