one mans trash...

the other day at work we got new sensors for the bay doors. the guy who changed them was going to just throw the old ones away. so i asked if i could have them.




i took one apart and here what was in it.





i imagine it was really strong because the IR filter was really thick


for some reason it showed purple on the picture.. i saw it as red.

IR shows up as red to your eyes, since it is right at the top end of the visible spectrum. It appears purple for the camera, due to the way the CCD detects the light.

so i have 5 more of these... 6 in total. they are not broken. i couldnt find anything on the diode. but i want to hook a driver to it, how many Ma's should i try to set it to? what is "to much" for IR diodes?

There really is no set standard to how much you can run IR diodes at, depends greatly on the diode.

Since you have six, start at a relatively safe 50ma and I base this on absolutely nothing, let it burn for a while and then slowly go up in increments, when it dies you will have reached the limit of the diode and you will know the limit of the remaining five diodes. That being said they seem pretty heavy duty, never seen that diode package.



Thanks
brtaman

Maybe you can google the numbers on the can to find the specs.
Is the light coherent? I've seen LED's in packages like that.

These are probably IR leds. These door sensors send out a beam that either bounces off a reflector and returns to a sensor in the same unit, or there is a receiver unit on the other side of the door. From your picture, it seems that there are two lenses., so probably there is an IR sensor in that unit as well. The thick lens focuses the IR from the leds into a beam that can be reflected back towards the sensor. The IR sensor could be interesting. Definately not garbage.