Lightning effect using camera flash units

Step 4 Circuit construction

I assembled the circuit on a breadboard.  This made it very easy to make changes.  Once I was finished, I didn't bother transfering the circuit to a soldered circuit board, I just put the whole works into a project case to protect it from curious fingers.  The project case was re-used from a previous project, so pay no attention to the unused connectors.  To save time I just passed the wires through the ventilation holes in the case and tied them in place, except for the power wires which I connected to the banana jacks already on the case.

I powered it with a +5V regulated bench power supply. 

I also built a 3V voltage regulator circuit using a 317T voltage regulator (see Fig. 5 in the data sheet for this circuit) to power a 110 camera flash (originally powered by two AA batteries).  The voltage regulator needed a big heat sink to handle the current drawn by the flash.

The photos are uploaded with full resolution so you can zoom in to view details if you like (click the "i" in the upper left).