rotary strobe idea

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Mr Gregory Peters by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <s371034-at-student.uq.edu.au>

Hey guys, I came up with this idea for a synchronous strobe, but I'm 
sure one of the following will be the case:

1. Someone has already thought of it.
2. It won't work.

Basically my idea is this:

You purchase an automotive timing light which uses an inductive clip to 
determine when to pulse. You then rectify the house 60/50Hz supply, and 
attach the resultant rippled DC source to a resistive load to draw some 
current. The inductive clip for the timing light is placed over the 
wire, and the strobe should flash at the frequency of the rippled DC. 

This is my theory, the only reason I can see that it may not work, is 
that the strobe may need a high energy pulse to be activated and this 
would not be provided by the rippled DC supply. What does everyone 
think? 

Or what about using a triac, capacitor and ignition coil (similar to 
TSG arrangement) to power a very cheap automotive timing light that 
does not use an inductive clip, but only wires in series with the spark 
plug.

Greg Peters
Department of Earth Sciences,
University of Queensland, Australia
Phone: 0402 841 677
http://www.geocities-dot-com/gregjpeters