Awesome! Wow, what an insane deal!!!
I've added it to the list!
A little late but you ain't kidding about the good deal!
This was my first nichia array, Man, I'm really impressed with the how well the integrated lens collimates and aligns keeping beams almost perfectly parallel. I'm no optical expert but I can imagine it takes some serious engineering prowess to pull off such a feat.
I've had previous experience with the
osram 80W array and was less than impressed with overall beam quality at a distance.
I can kind of understand why things are as perfect as I would like because pumping phosphor at relatively close ranges doesn't require perfection.
Still, The fact that nichia took the time to get it damn near perfect when it probably doesn't need to be speaks volumes.
It never fails to impress when I put a lens in front of the beams to focus them all to a point..
It's just mind-blowing pointing at random stones watching them melt into lava before my eyes. Eye protection is of course being used.
There's no practicality for these things that I can find other than their extreme nerd factor it gives knowing I'm literally holding in my hands power levels that were literally unfathomable to think would be a reality just 10 years ago..
One thing I tried that was pretty awesome is I wanted to see if the beam shined into the night sky was as bright far away as it looks when close up.
Hard to tell on these kinds of things. Of course I use the utmost safety checking and double checking and triple checking for aircraft both visually and with ADSB.. well aware of the dangers to aviation and do everything possible to minimize risk. I'm half jokingly thinking it's not just aviation with these monsters you could possibly damage satellite optics lol!
So anyway what I did was wait for my son to drive over a bridge that's about 10 miles from my house.
It would give him a clear line of sight east where he could possibly view the beam.
He's driving I shine the laser straight up. Instantly goes yeah Daddy! Turn it off It's more than visible.
So curious I then tilted the beam towards his general direction knowing that it would probably be even brighter. He emphatically yelled turn that thing off You're going to get in trouble it is beyond bright!
My son is a very risk averse young 18-year-old. Likelihood of trouble is very very low but apparently this made such an impression on him that he reacted that dramatically.
He's been jaded with my laser creations throughout the years. Things I think are impressive he usually just gives a sarcastic "cool" comment before instantly walking off.
This was different. When he got home I asked him again come on are you exaggerating? He said oh my God absolutely not. He was shocked just how intense the beam was from such a distance..
Just to put this in context this wasn't a cloudy night. It was a cool night, minimally humidity. Good night viewing through a telescope. With humidity and perhaps clouds it might even be more pronounced due to the back scattering off of water molecules.
Also, I wasn't overdriving the diodes at the time. I was running them at recommended max of three amps each. I've went up to as high as four and a half amps per diode . Definite upward shift in frequency driving hard and also diminishing returns light versus acceptable waste heat output..
My power setup has been 16 s 4p pack I whipped together with a bunch of 21000 lion cells. Driver is one of those 20 amp, 12 to 120 volt 900W boost converters. Available from Amazon for like $23.
I forgot the name of them maybe junktec? Seriously I think the name is something like that lol.
They're not that bad for what they are. When pushed hard they're known for popping mosfets and/or their schottke diodes but they're easily replaceable and inexpensive. That was also a bug with the original firmware that causes this to occur with a weird combination of key presses.
There's actually a nice mod on GitHub that allows these drivers to be controlled via phone with an ESP 32 taking place of the stock display.. very easy to both flash and connect the ESP 32 to the driver via a readily accessible serial port.. anyone with the technical know-how to fire up one of these lasers has more than enough skills too figure out how to do it..
Firmware is totally rewritten designed to take full advantage of the TI PWM controller which the stock firmware failed to do. Much more efficiently than with stock firmware..It
actually turns these converters into a very nice, feature packed driver That would be sold for many times as price.. makes it easy to use for many purposes beyond driving laser arrays or high powered LEDs. Charging high voltage lithium ion batteries at a relatively decent current rate It's just one example..
Hell, I'd even trust it for a makeshift lab power supply after the firmware/ ESP 32 mod..
even be used forIt also eliminates that bug that burns the fets/diodes.
I'm now itching to figure out a way to personally view the beam from 10 miles away to confirm it truly is not some exaggeration or something. I don't have much reason to doubt my son, I just like to see it myself..
I don't have anybody I ever trust to operate the laser.
Way too dangerous and way too complicated for anyone to operate who doesn't have a understanding of how and why the driver, active heat sinking and battery setup works.
These things are seriously seriously powerful.
One example would be last week I aimed The parallel beams straight up onto dead leaves that are still stubbornly hanging onto the top branches of a birch tree.
About 50 ft away and I literally lit those leaves on fire within seconds! Holy freaking crap! To do something like that just blows my mind! Even more amazing given that this was achieved with just the output from the stock integrated lens..
