Laser Crab Guts & Info! + LOTS of pics

Hey guys, I got a laser crab a little while ago and now that I'm bored of playing around with it I thought I'd take it to parts and see whats inside and what can be done with it.

It's a sound lab 5mW laser Spirograph, and is pretty cool, it changes to patterns to music or you can customize the patterns with the two pots on the back, it can be run of a 240V mains or through 4 AA 1.5V DC battery's.

Here's some pictures:



Inside with the two motors, and the 5mW red laser module in a nice black polished module, it was originally covered in hot glue to keep it in place but I scraped that away, but still fits very nicely in it's little plastic holder.



An up close shot of the module removed from it's holder, there is a focusable ring on the front which focuses the dot quite nicely, although quite stiff.



Another shot of the module from the front, it's very similar to the aixiz module except a polished black, I will go into sizes later on.



Insides of the module there is a very small driver in place connected to the back of the diode, from one I can make out that is a pot on the back of the driver but I'm not sure, I did a quick voltage measurement on the back wires and I believe it's 3.15V being fed to the driver. If someone could give some info on a good way to measure the current being fed to the diode I'd appreciate it.



Did a quick size comparison with the back of an aixiz module and the module they provide and turns out they are pretty much identical in size and shape. I placed the back of the aixiz module into the holder inside the laser crab and it fits perfectly, so this would be great mod to be replaced with a high powered red module or something which I will be doing soon.



The aixiz module nice and snug in the holder.

And to finish things off I got a quick dot comparison between the 5mW module and my DX 200mW since I don't have an LPM to measure accurately.



Sorry if this is in the wrong section, but it's mainly to display the mod potential on this piece, hope you liked it and if you think it should be moved to the review section more than an experiments section then I'll talk to c0ld.

Nice pics I wish I could get mine to focus that good. That is a pot and if you have a volt ohm meter set it to Ma and put it in series with a 3 to 4.5 volt supply. if it's running at 3.15 I would try a 3.6 volt Lipo. have fun !

Best Regards Pyro... :eg:

Cheers Flamin, yea I have a multimeter so I'll have a play later on, I was just curious mainly too see the voltage coming out because it should make a nice supply for another module with a flex drive.

Cheers for the comment on the pics, they were re sized down from 3504 x 2336px, it's a beastly camera

If this is the inside, and if the LD module is distant at least some millimeters over the components, i see a lot of space for place in it a combo unit RGV, maybe made with a phr sled, as also explained here in some other posts ..... but i've said nothing :angel:


Edit: and about the way for sure measure the current, just put an 1 ohm, 1 watt, 5% (or better, depend what you find) resistor in series of one of the wires (preferably the positive one, for convenience, but really don't care which wire you use), then put your multimeter on mV, and connect it in parallel to the resistor ..... each millivolt you read, it's a milliampere that pass through the diode

Thats mighty cool. i wish i had one of these to stick an LOC in.

Dark

damn yours is better than mine mine doesnt have pots. lol

hey ahserz originally, did every now and then the laser turn off?

nope I haven't had any problems along those lines, all seem to work well just the laser is so weak it's useless even with a fog machine lol.

ye but you dont expect much with 5mW red. ill probably buy a green module in a few weeks. probably only a 30mW from O-like but itll be a hell of a lot better than 5mW red.

add some green

Laser Man - MODDED LASER CRAB

andy_con said:

add some green

Laser Man - MODDED LASER CRAB

Click to expand...

woah thats a good idea.

And what about something similar (the blue cube is a combiner) ?

Then you can also take the signal from the mic section, and use it for drive the beams, or just drive them from 2 slow triangle waves, making the color contiunuously slow change (just set the drivers for go from 25% to 100%)

Or pwm, with a pair of NE555 it's the more easy way, and 555 already have a drive input

Just some other crazy ideas

Same can be done with 3 band pass filters, one for low, one for mid and olne for high sounds. Audio signal gets divided in those frequency ranges, and each filter drives a transistor that drives a second transistor that drives one ofthe 3 spyrograph motors. That way, you have patterns that fully depend on both the tone and the rythm of the music. Add a microphonr amplifier and you got it.

I'm gonna do that in a near future, adapting a color organ circuit I found on the internet.

Cool pics

good ideas guys, maybe I might give some of them a try when I get a little time

@Tymtravler: Thanks for the compliment on the pictures