I would like to know how the pickup on a strobe gun works.
Strobe gun = a device you use when setting the ignition timing on (old?) car engines. You place a pickup on the wire to the spark plug, and the strobe flashes everytime a spark is fired.
I would like to know how the pickup can sense the high voltage going through the sparkplug wire - if possible, I would like to make my own.
It likely picks up a signal from the capacitance between the wire and the pickup. It doesn't take much capacitance to get a useable signal from the high voltage spark.
If you experiment with coupling this signal into a circuit, be sure you limit the signal amplitude with zener diodes to avoid zapping the circuit.
It likely picks up a signal from the capacitance between the wire and the pickup. It doesn't take much capacitance to get a useable signal from the high voltage spark.
If you experiment with coupling this signal into a circuit, be sure you limit the signal amplitude with zener diodes to avoid zapping the circuit.
The spring clip idea sounds easy. So a metal plate pressed against the wire will do.
How do I then measure the capacitance so I can get a signal into a PIC? Do I need some kind of capacitance sensor chip? Or will there be generated a voltage on the plate with respect to ground?