I have a Sea and Sea YS-110 (not alpha) strobe that suddenly stopped firing. I'm using an optical cable to trigger the strobe. I already ruled out a defective cable because I can easily see the flashlight at the other end of the cable, and flashing my camera's strobe directly in the optical sensor doesn't work either. Before, optical triggering worked flawless for me, so there is definitely something broken. But the strobe is not completely dead. The ready light still turns on, I can hear the capacitors charging, and the focus light works too. Any idea what could be wrong?
I'm already going to borrow an electrical cable from a friend to check whether I can still trigger the strobe electrically.
I managed to fire the strobe by connecting the ground and trigger pins in the nikonos connector. So the flashtubes and circuit are still working. I think that leaves only the optical sensor/circuit. Does anyone have an idea what I could try next?
Sounds like you've diagnosed about as much as can be expected without cracking seals and poking around at the electronics directly. Sounds like a return for repair issue at this point....
Photodetectors are pretty simple components, and you can buy a lot of them from places like www.mouser.com or other electronics suppliers...but since this is a photodetector behind a water seal, I'd be fairly hesitant to break into it and try a replacement myself. I imagine if it's already out of warranty and you only ever use it optically coupled though....
The problem has been found. The slave button was set to off, and I didn't notice that. Silly mistake :-)
