Sigurthr
0
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2011
- Messages
- 4,364
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I picked up a cheap eBay "Cat Toy Laser" figuring it would be good for my cat, who is getting antsy as the weather gets cold and she can't be out chasing wildlife. I had given away my <5mW handhelds last year to kids in my family, figuring that I could always get more. I remember back before 2000 when you saw tons of the yellow bodied 1mW 660nm keychain lasers. Not anymore.
The offender: Fun Cat Toy Laser Cat Toy U s Shipper by Maxam | eBay
First off, the body is plastic which has a conductive aluminized layer on it. So, of course, the keychain loop breaks off from the torque of screwing it in to the "threads" when inserting the batteries. I press the button and WHAM... THAT AIN'T 1mW! That doesn't even look like 5mW... Grab the old LPM and it peaks at 12mW, settles at 8.4mW.
Don't use this or others like it for playing with your pets. They're going to be less than a meter from the spot and their eyes are far more sensitive than ours.
I looked through hundreds of listings on ebay and couldn't find any keychain pointers like what we used to have. All you see now are double and triple action LED combo pointers which you can see will fail after three button presses because they use plastic button mechanisms. A couple of single action ones exist, and they're either as I bought or used early 2000-2010 models that are beat to hell, with way too high of a price.
If anyone has one of those ca. 1999 style 1mW pointers they can part with, shoot me a PM.
The offender: Fun Cat Toy Laser Cat Toy U s Shipper by Maxam | eBay
First off, the body is plastic which has a conductive aluminized layer on it. So, of course, the keychain loop breaks off from the torque of screwing it in to the "threads" when inserting the batteries. I press the button and WHAM... THAT AIN'T 1mW! That doesn't even look like 5mW... Grab the old LPM and it peaks at 12mW, settles at 8.4mW.
Don't use this or others like it for playing with your pets. They're going to be less than a meter from the spot and their eyes are far more sensitive than ours.
I looked through hundreds of listings on ebay and couldn't find any keychain pointers like what we used to have. All you see now are double and triple action LED combo pointers which you can see will fail after three button presses because they use plastic button mechanisms. A couple of single action ones exist, and they're either as I bought or used early 2000-2010 models that are beat to hell, with way too high of a price.
If anyone has one of those ca. 1999 style 1mW pointers they can part with, shoot me a PM.
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