How to manually trip a 580?

Kind of an off the wall question.

About 20 years ago, a friend and I took some high-speed pictures of a balloon breaking. We taped a string to the back of the balloon, and tied the other end of a string to a sensitive switch. We had a patch cord hooked up to a flash and wired to the switch. The process was: 1) lights out, 2) camera on "bulb", 3) break the balloon, 4) balloon pulls string, trips flash, captures image on film, 5) camera shutter closed.

I want to try the same thing using my 580 EX. Is there any way to trip the flash like in the above example? ...any other ways??

Thanks!
Ed

Get one of these to mount the 580EX on and then strip the wire and hook it up to a switch. You can also use a sound activated switch to accomplish the same thing.

http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …EG&addedTroughT​ype=search