Gentlemen, I am trying to build, for hobbyist purposes, a circuit which would meet the following requirements:
-It would drive a luxeon LED 3W continuously, with variable brightness.
-It would also operate the same LED in a single flash mode, with external triggering by a flash slave trigger. Ideally the flash duration should be variable within a range of uSec to a few mSec, but a fixed flash duration of 0.1 - 2mSec would be fine. the idea is to use the LED as a microscope illuminator, and also allow flash photography with the same LED to capture fast moving protists. The LED in flash mode would be triggered by the camera flash via a slave trigger, which I already have. Unfortunately, I lack the expertise to design a suitable circuit - so am asking for help, oh, and it should be simple enough for me to build - I am an old codger from the thermionic era, and can't really cope with PIC programming, which I guess would be a way of doing this. If anyone can suggest a solution, or produce a schematic of such a device, I'd really be very grateful, and am sure many of my fellow microscopists would also be indebted. many thanks, HJ