Stun gun or Electric BBQ ignitor?

[jimmy101]

stun gun more efficient

More efficient than what?

Efficiency really doesn't enter into the problem. Anything that will give an electric spark will ignite a combustion spudgun. A 10KV spark is just as efficient as a 100KV or a 100,000 KV spark. Higher voltage will not increase the performance of the gun unless you do something like add a large number of spark gaps. (Even then, the increase in performance is probably pretty minor.)

The cost of a piezo is about the same as a stungun, especially if you have to pay shipping on the stungun.

Both piezos and stunguns have a tendency to crap out, especially if you only paid $10 for it.

Piezos are legal everywhere, stunguns are not.

Stunguns are a little easier to use in a remote ignition situation.

A piezo won't knock you on your ass if you touch the wrong thing.

A stungun needs a 9V battery, piezos don't use batteries.

[noob of noobs]

It's also a lot harder to get stunguns if you're a kid too.

[Bananarama]

I don't know why stun gun is mentioned as arcing. A stun gun doesn't arc, it shoots prongs into a person then shocks them. A taser arcs. As for the battery powered barbecue ignitors that are on a lot of newer barbecues, they are very much a mini taser. Same design in a smaller package.

[jimmy101]

that will work if you have an ignition coil.

If you have the entire flash unit then there is a trigger coil on the circuit board. You can remove the big-ass photo capacitor since it is only charged to 300 V, which is not enough to get a spark across a gap. There is a second, smaller cap that gets discharged through the trigger coil to get the spark needed to ignite the flash tube (which then dumps the photo cap's charge). You can use that spark to ignite a spud gun (maybe).

You can also rig up a "trigitran" from the flash circuit. It takes three electrodes; two are across the bigass photo cap's wires and the third is from the trigger coil. Now when the trigger coil makes a spark in the gap that allows the ~5J of energy in the photocap to be dumped. Makes a big fat, and loud, spark. (Overkill, but fun) https://www.angelfire.com/80s/sixmhz/trigatron.html

[jimmy101]

You can get the piezo BBQ igniters for pretty cheap. And they work just fine (and no battery to replace).

$2.25 at Walmart
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Piezo-Spark- ... /565163086