Recent content by RA_pierce

While I think the technology is cool and I love wildlife, I have some issues with the pop-science framing of this subject. First of all, its highly questionable whether these animals are more than slightly modified gray wolves. Second, gray wolves in North America face their own dire crisis of...

Ah, I forgot to mention: I did some color correction in photoshop since no digital camera I've seen can properly render yellow lasers. Your spec reading is good to know. I need to find a better lens to use for my little DIY spectrometer. The lack of optical sharpness of the lens is the limiting...

A while back I received a couple 570 nm laser modules from TinkerTavern. This thread is dedicated to a review of the module and showcasing some details of the build. The Module I didn't select one of my two modules for this build with any prior knowledge of how it performs. Both were tested...

I purchased a couple laser modules from TinkerTavern a while back. I posted a review detailing my experience. In short, I felt that TinkerTavern was dishonest about shipping times, and the lack of reliable communication about delays gave me concerns that I was getting scammed. Despite these...

Thanks, Paul. Politics aside, I like Montana. I've spent some time out here during grad school and for someone like me, with an interest in outdoor recreation, it has a lot to offer. I do miss the variety of food in California, among other things.

Hi everyone. I'm making my biannual appearance to share a "quick" build. Several months ago I earned a PhD in evolutionary biology from my research on speciation genomics. I ended up getting a job in Montana, which is a big change from Southern California. I haven't had much time to catch my...

Very cool. Do you mind sharing details about how you wired everything up? Maybe pics of the guts? I've been meaning to try something similar but was worried it wouldn't work well. It's nice to see people are still building things!

That's not a bad idea, however if you're building a laser with a sliding beam stop to switch between the "free" aperture and the dichroic mirror, you might as well just put two holes in the beam stop - one open and the mirror glued into the other. This would eliminate the need for alignment of...

I suppose I'd qualify as a "host designer." I have plans to make a small batch of simple hosts - a few pen-style and maybe a few larger hosts for more powerful setups. I just haven't had the time to work on it lately. @Alien Laser have you seen some of my recent builds? I have a few links in my...

Very nice. I've been planning an ECDL for some time... your report will be helpful. Thanks for sharing!

Yeah, but we expect dishonesty from "news" sources, don't we? The facts are less important than clicks and advertiser $$$. Lasers are regarded by the public as toys and they are being sold and advertised as such. In the USA, the FAA receives tens of thousands of aircraft illuminated by lasers...

Too late. It's been getting worse and worse every year. It was bad when it was just 30 mW DPSS pointers but now it's easy to get lasers with 10 or even 100 times as much power. At this point its out of control. Build your collection and get your components while you can. Misuse of lasers is not...

I bet those CR2 batteries don't last long. It's nice to see one of these diodes up and running. This looks like a fun little laser. Any chance you could get a spectro reading after it's all warmed up? I'm curious how much it will shift as the temp increases. The datasheet I have unfortunately...

A laser behaves like a point source of light, so its intensity will decrease according to the inverse square law (ignoring scattering, diffraction, absorption, etc.) just like radio waves will. At these astronomical distances, I think it's fair to also treat a radio transmitter as a point...

Yeah, that's what I meant. It's cool that you got acceptable surface quality - it's something I've wanted to try but figured it's not worthwhile considering the stone-age tools I'm working with.