Friday, October 1, 2010

Testing Aixiz lasers

I bought some infrared lasser from Aixiz to build an interactive multitouch surface.
To avoid any damage to my eyes, I was wearing Infrared protection glasses from Dragon Lasers

Now, the thing that I hadn't planned was how to power the lasers :-)
As they are rated at 3.2VDC, drawing approximately 30ma of current, this seems something my Arduino Duemilanovae could do.


  1. Connect the Arduino to the USB port of the computer
  2. Connect an infared camera to the computer ( here using a modified PS3eye with a 850nm filter - same wavelength as the lasers)
  3. Position the camera, and launch a viewer (here using the CL-Eye Test from Code Laboratories )
  4. Put the protection glasses on, close all doors & windows  to the room you're in (and you are alone right!)
  5. Hook up a laser to the Arduino: red cable on the "3v3" , black cable on "Gnd"
  6. You should now see the laser beaming (or not) through the viewer


Repeat for all the lasers you ordered to make sure they are all working properly...and give a good feedback to Aixiz if you bought your lasers from their eBay store

You can see a bit of the laser in this picture because a picture camera will see infrared (whereas your eyes cannot).
Now I have to find something to power 4 lasers at the same time (something I'm not sure the Arduino can do)

2 comments:

  1. Hey, is there any way you could test to see if the Arduino unit will power 2 or more lasers? Your post was very helpful.

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  2. according to the specs,
    http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardDuemilanove

    you cannot power more than 2 lasers on the 3.3v pin since you cannot draw over 50ma.
    maybe with some resistors on the 5v pin ? the specs do not specify how much current you can take from this pin

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