A headset, such as an artificial reality headset, includes one or more illuminators that emit light. A controller, such as an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) is coupled to a plurality of illuminators. The controller receives multiple trigger signals and generates pulse signals for activating different illuminators in response to each trigger signal. For example, a controller receives at least two trigger signals that can be used to drive different illuminators having different modalities (e.g., eye tracking, depth sensing, etc.). Each trigger signal can occur at a different time than other trigger signals, or may have a different characteristic (e.g., amplitude, pulse width, frequency, etc.) than other trigger signals. Pulse signals generated by the controller for different illuminators based on different trigger signals can also have different characteristics.