Detailed "How-To" for eBay Remotes Mod
Over at Instructables, Strobist reader David W. Smith posted a detailed run-through showing how to mod on the cheapie eBay remotes with a much better antenna. I know we have mentioned this before, but this is by far the most detailed tutorial yet.
Total cost: Some solder and a small piece of wire.
Illegal? Possibly.
Effective? Given that it might be illegal, I am not gonna comment on the specifics of David's insanely increased range. Because that would be irresponsible.
Those of you who can live with occasionally breaking the law for 1/250th of a second at a time might consider putting your soldergeek skills to work on this very cheap alteration.
Being a fine, upstanding, legal Pocket Wizard user, I completely disavow myself of all knowledge of your actions, of course.
Total cost: Some solder and a small piece of wire.
Illegal? Possibly.
Effective? Given that it might be illegal, I am not gonna comment on the specifics of David's insanely increased range. Because that would be irresponsible.
Those of you who can live with occasionally breaking the law for 1/250th of a second at a time might consider putting your soldergeek skills to work on this very cheap alteration.
Being a fine, upstanding, legal Pocket Wizard user, I completely disavow myself of all knowledge of your actions, of course.
Labels: DIY
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by David, at 2:49 PM.
16 Comments:
man if someone could mod these things to work with my sekonic meters I would buys some now LOL!
If these remotes are operating at 433 MHz as stated in the article, they're already illegal in the U.S. as this frequency is within the UHF amateur radio band (420-450 MHz).
I. ebay slaves don't carry an FCC license, so they're illegal at any frequency (unless they're classified as "experiemental", which they probably aren't)
II. 433MHz is also licensed for "radiolocation" service. Perhaps I'm just radiolocating my strobes? (i.e., "radio ping-- where are you?" "optical flash! I'm over here!")
This looks nice, I'm gonna try it, I've been using them extensively indoors for the past few weeks with no problems, haven't had a chace to use them at long distances because it's freaking cold here in Chicago and I don't want to shoot outside
I have one more question about these ebay remotes, which cable would I need to attach the receivers directly to the port on the sb28/800s? Just a standard pc-sync cord?
I'm using them with umbrellas and the hot shoe mount raises them up too much and is unstable.
True, it's in the UHF band; but that region is a ISM band, allowing restricted operation at low power.
i modded mine last night with slightly thicker wire 1.25 mm and quite a bit longer as i was going to test it and trim as needed. Instead of a 200 ft range i ended up with about 200 meters... my friend was running around the city near my apartment at night and i would check his location with the flash. Weeeee
Anonymous, these can operate in the USA legally as they are part 15 devices, specifically, they would be part 15.231 low power remote switches.
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/12feb20041500/edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2004/octqtr/47cfr15.231.htm
433Mhz is considered the "safe" frequency for this type of device to be accepted worldwide. I think only Japan has issues with this allocation.
If you go to your nearest auto parts place you'll find garage door openers, car alarms, and many other gadgets in the 433Mhz range.
I think my pacemaker just hiccuped...
Hmm, I don't know what's all this fuss about the range of these things? I shoot in a basketball gym and never ever had a problem with range. 20m+ (60ft+) is more then enough in my opinion, why would you need more? I have yet to test the actual range of my trigger.
Another thing, few ebay sellers of this triggers claim they don't work with sb-26, I know my seller did, but the work anyhow :) They also work with my two REALLY old flashes (from my grandfather if you can believe it) with no problems. PW didn't work with them at all.
So for less then 50$, this really is a great buy imo.
So david when you come to the UK to give your seminar, you're going to purchase new pocket wizards for use over here, cause aren't your american ones illegal over here?
I modded mine two days ago and it is very easy to do. As a quick tip, I didn't have any solid core wire (only stranded) so I used a large trombone (paper clip). The size is perfect to go through the hole on the circuit board and is stiff enough to hold the shape you want to give it.
The diameter isn't quite as important as the length which should be the same as or half the wavelength. 12" or 6" roughly, respectively. A paperclip will do better than the trace on the circuitboard, but not as good as a true 6" whip.
Once you get into the gigahertz range then a trace on a circuit board can be almost as good as an actual antenna. (Higher frequency means shorter wavelength means shorter antenna.)
- Jon
@Mat:
The extended range is less about the actual range, and more about increasing the signal to noise ratio-- increased range is just an easy way to demonstrate the increased signal.
you may also cascade them to extend the range.
connect the receiver pc out to the transfer pc in.
Then you can extend the range like Wifi network :P
As Rod noted correctly here, FCC regulation in it's Part 15.231 lets these remotes off the hook. They are not FCC certified, but they are FCC exempted (as long as designed to comply with the paragraph) and therefore legal. And the 433MHz frequency is outside any restricted band, and therefore is totally legal too. These triggers are classified as "periodic emitters", because they only work for short bursts of time. Because of this they are allowed much higher power compared to "continuous emitters", such as cordless phones (house variety, not cell). In fact they may have up to 50 times more power than these, according to FCC. Consider this: with fresh battery my garage opener works full block away, through the wall! That's a good guidance for staying within "legal".
After all, (by FCC rules) if somebody is unhappy with interference from Part 15.231 device, and he calls FCC to intervene, you'll be required to "immediately cease the operation of the device". No mandatory jail time.
Good reading on this:
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/part15.html
Someone did a extensive study on the trigger channels and it turns out that some channels perform much better than other ones: http://wavelength.org.nz/equipment/triggertest
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