My first review here...
Shipping
I ordered this laser (and a few greens) from LaserLands on 1.11.10, shipped on 1.14.10, and it came in the mail 1.30.10. Really good compared to Dealextreme taking over month, which is the only other place where I have had something shipped to me from China. So...
Maybe you can see the beam irl, however, cameras don't always pick it up. I've had cell phone cameras not able to pick up >100mW with fog. I'm sure it's easily possible for a <200mW laser beam to not be picked up on camera in a fairly clear night, with street lights around.
Yup, I was wondering why I had this gray color, while other people who just joined have green. I saw c0ld post something about rep and the forum update the other day, figured that was it.
It's green now tho.
I've had mine for months with no problems with it. For cheap/DIY heatsinks, you can use nuts and washers from the hardware store. I think I used 1/2inch nuts and grinded the inside down till I got a nice fit, and used thermal grease(stuff they put on CPU's to keep them cool) to make it better...
Nice to hear you got it working.
Yeah, I have heard people also say 9V are not great to use, because they wont last all that long I believe. But I'm satisfied with the battery life I get with mine.
Not enough volts, according to Rog's website, Blu-Rays need about 4.5V ALONE, and the driver itself takes up power as well(~3V Idr how much the Rkcstr uses). I use a 9V for my PHR with the Rkcstr driver, and it has been working great.
It can be done - Laser driver
Re: hello to everybody
Careful, there is a link in that 'h'. Looks unsafe, Googling brought up bunch of posts that are the exact same as this. clicky
EDIT: I removed the link in the 'h' in my quote, but bolded it. Don't click it.
Can't really say, I have no idea how much power the current diode is getting. Without that information it's impossible to say what you could replace it with. But i doubt you could a significant power increase with the current way it's setup now anyway.
You will NOT be able to just swap out the diode. The voltage and current required for a diode out of a DVD burner like an LPC will be a lot different from the the current diode. And there is isn't going to be any type of heatsink in this flashlight/laser currently that you would need with a DVD...