DIY Strobes?

I'm working on a small studio, 10'x10' and I want to have some strobes that I can mess around with for super cheap. I'm not too much of a techie, but I figure it should be pretty easy to make a strobe light from a Xenon flash tube, but surely it's been done already- right?

I found this website with a 50ws strobe setup for about $25+the cost of mating it to a PC sync cable, maybe another $5. This all sounds too good to be true, I could easily buy four kits and have AC or AA powered strobes for less than $130. (no control over intensity, but that's easy to modify in a studio setup)

What do you guys think? Anyone try one of these kits? Soldering I can do...
http://www.xenonflasht​ubes.com/optical-flash.html

In not sure how well they would do.... But I have a few ideas where they would be perfect .

Cheapest one I know of is one I made myself... I followed the idea of a friend of a friend, so I can't take credit for it - I will have to take pictures later and post back... but it was made using the flash board from a disposable camera.

I went to a local photo lab and asked if they had any disposables that had already been developed, which had built-in flash. I think they gave me 5 of them - no charge. I removed the flash board, and inserted it into some small plastic project boxes I purchased - also wired in a 3.5mm jack for a sync port. There is no knob adjustment to control the flash power, but I have altered it with a piece of tape... simply covering part of it. I suppose you could also use Neutral Density gels.

Here is a self-pic I took in a hotel room one night I was on travel for work messing around with it:

Building stuff can be fun & sometimes is the only solution if you need to hide the tube in a small place. But look at these. They're are pretty cheap & mine have worked for decades:
Simple "every-day-emergency" location lighting

Under $30: 3 items found similar to 'Vivitar 283 Flash'