Driving a mod light from an in-game flasher

[DevilzAvocado]

I would like to sync 2 stern flashers (together) on a mod to a flasher in the game (Spike 2). Zo that they light when the in game flasher lights. I don't want to power the mod flashers from the game, so I will have an independent 5v dc supply. I am thinking that I could connect an optocoupler across the game flasher's 5v supply and return on the node board and have that trigger a low side connected mosfet to which the mod lights are connected. Would this work? And any idea of resistor sizes? I have no idea what I am doing, so any help would be much appreciated! Thanks.

 

[DAFlippers]

Yeah, you can use an opto to detect the flasher being driven and use the opto output to trigger your flashers or do something more interesting with a microcontroller.

David

 

[AlanJ]

If you use one of the off the shelf PC817 optocoupler boards then you should be ok to wire its input across the flasher lamp directly, but you may as well just buy a mosfet board which already includes an opto isolator

 

[DevilzAvocado]

Thanks very much. I've ordered a board as suggested. Fingers crossed!

 

[stumblor]

If you use one of the off the shelf PC817 optocoupler boards then you should be ok to wire its input across the flasher lamp directly, but you may as well just buy a mosfet board which already includes an opto isolator

Not sure about which board you're talking about but max input voltage of a pc817 is 6v so a flasher wired directly to it will fry it. A resistor in series on the input side will protect against that.



Although it sounds like spike flashers are 6v leds, unlike wpc flashers.

 

[stumblor]

And if that doesn't work out for you , here's a shameless plug for one of my products.



LollyGi. The little outboard you see at the bottom was specifically designed to control toys like you describe.

Here's me mucking around with controlling a flappy fish, set on a 5 second timer.

 

[DevilzAvocado]

That's fantastic! Thanks. I'll DM you.