DIY: GI Triggers Antenna Mod

After making the "DIY: How to Assemble an Antenna to GI Triggers" and watching the excellent video I had to push myself to make this modification for my triggers.

I always wanted to make this change on mine not that I use them for distance purposes, nor to measure how far can I trigger them without really having the use for them at those far distances but I needed to make this mod for stability purposes.

Everyone knows that Gadget Infinity triggers are very inexpensive and great but they lack reliability in terms of trigger and also because their plastic is somehow very sensible and not has tough has many would think they would be at for 25,00 euros a pack I think they are more than enough when you plan on playing with your flashes off camera.

Take a look at a simple operation that you can make yourself even with a not so good experience on welding, like myself ;)

Cactus Antenna Mod_001

First things first, let's grab our Gadget Infinity Trigger (I will be refering to them here as GI so I won't have to write it down so many times).

Cactus Antenna Mod_002

These are the tools you will be needing for this:

- Knife (to cut the wire).
- Pencil (to wrap the wire and make it curly).
- Philips screw driver
- Piece of wire (I use one from the wrap cables)
- Welding Iron
- GI trigger
- Welding

Cactus Antenna Mod_003

Open the GI with the Philips screw driver, you can find the screw near the hot shoe adapter on the bottom part.

Cactus Antenna Mod_004

Here is what it looks like when you have open it... don't be afraid this is a simple straight forward task.

Cactus Antenna Mod_005

The wire measure more or less 19,5 cm. This was on wrap that I had that was big enough to fit the measures for the antenna. You can find this baby wrapping any cable that comes packed.

Cactus Antenna Mod_006

Remove the plastic cover with the knife, this you can measure as much as you feel comfortable with. I just removed enough so I won't get too much wire outside after welding it to the GI.

Cactus Antenna Mod_007

Here is the place where you are going to weld. You can see that there is another hole near the F6-616 and some people been using this hole to, but from what I've been reading around the left side one is a more reliable one.

Cactus Antenna Mod_008

See why I mentioned the pencil, this would make the wire curly so it fits inside the GI without having to make any holes on the cover.

Cactus Antenna Mod_009

This is what it will look like after welding it.

Cactus Antenna Mod_010

Before welding be sure to remove the battery, we don't want to blow out anything wouldn't we?

Be sure to put some weld on the cable before you weld it to the hole this would make it much easier to weld and you will not damage anything inside.

Cactus Antenna Mod_011

Here it is the final shot after welding and putting the cable inside. No holes needed on the front cover of the GI, as I said before I was not looking for distance measurements but reliability.

Cactus Antenna Mod_013

Here is a shot from my balcony through my kitchen, living room and the light was at one of the living rooms at the bottom of the house.

I can tell you that the walls here are pretty stiff and has you can see on the above image the GI couldn't get the job done.

Cactus Antenna Mod_012

The same place, or at least almost the same place and now with the mod already done.

It did triggered the GI on the other end of the house as you can see, now I can have more reliability on these inexpensive triggers and hope you will do the same to yours.

Not only you will get less misfiring from the trigger but you will also get more reliability from them even at close range.

I will let you make some distance test, since this was not my main goal when I wanted to make this mod, also as you can see from others I decided to NOT make the hole for the antenna, simply because distance is not one of my goals for the GI.

Enjoy.

Other places to visit:

* GI Cactus V2s Modification Tutorial
* How To Solder
* Increase effective distance
* Gadget Infinity Cactus V2s Trigger Mod
* 4 channel transmitter mod
* Ebay trigger antenna mod
* Cactus "ebay" V2s Trigger mod that looks good and works
* GI Cactus Mod
* Gadget Infinity Mod

2 comments:

Antonio Correia said...

Pretty cool Rui !
Good work.
:)

Anonymous said...

It actually works, but take care. On my 5D the mod interfered with my camera and screwed up all the images of a shooting. I had some strange lines on one side of the images. So try it before you use it on too much shots.

Cheers ... Andreas.