I'm building a circuit for a safety device which has a strobe on each side of the enclosure.

Does anyone know of a strobe schematic which shows how you can run two strobes that blink at the same time? I want to minimize the number of parts required. Therefore have them use the same High Voltage circuit / other components that can be shared... what i'm unsure on is whether the neon lamp can be shared. Possibly the only thing that needs to be independent is the trigger coil and the xenon tubes itself.

Perhaps if i'm trying to drive 2 5W tubes i could find a design rated for 10 watts and just put two trigger coils in parallel?

As mentioned above my target blink rate is rather slow. Around 1 flash / 2 seconds (possibly even slower).

Thanks for any suggestions,
~blake[/i]

 

I assume you are familiar with the circuit of a normal strobe. I suggest that each tube have its own capacitor, mounted close to the tube, as high currents are involved and wiring resistance would make the results miserable. Also the use of separate trigger coils is a good idea to avoid expensive cable to handle the 10kv or so trigger pulse. Use a trigger capacitor for each coil. The inverter can be shared, but put a resistor of a hundred ohms or so in the feed to each capacitor. Hope this helps.

 

I mean the tubes 5Wsec. I recommend the sequential triggering, for longer life.