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.
- Connect the Arduino to the USB port of the computer
- Connect an infared camera to the computer ( here using a modified PS3eye with a 850nm filter - same wavelength as the lasers)
- Position the camera, and launch a viewer (here using the CL-Eye Test from Code Laboratories )
- Put the protection glasses on, close all doors & windows to the room you're in (and you are alone right!)
- Hook up a laser to the Arduino: red cable on the "3v3" , black cable on "Gnd"
- 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)
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.
ReplyDeleteaccording to the specs,
ReplyDeletehttp://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