Up to this point, the attention grabber and the swing-timing-thingy were two separate ideas but connecting the two was just too obvious.

Ideally, the timing-device should send a trigger to the attention-grabber a short time before the camera is triggered. The attention-grabber should at least switch off its light effects just before the picture is taken.

This leads to the question which mode of communication should be used between the parts.

My SLR camera (a rather dated Pentax K100d) offers two options for remote triggering: a 2,5mm jack which I previously used for my time-lapse-bot and an IR-remote.

Furthermore the attention-grabber needs some kind of input as well and is also supposed to work on its own, since I consider it useful in other scenarios.

The idea therefor is to establish a connection between timing-thingy and attention-grabber and use the attention-grabber to subsequently trigger the camera using the 2,5mm jack. Connection between the two components of the system could be established by e.g. 433 MHz radio or IR. I shall look into both options at a later point.