Benm
0
- Joined
- Aug 16, 2007
- Messages
- 7,896
- Points
- 113
I recently ordered the AAA powered 50 mW laser from ledshoppe. Price was $22.5 after a 10% discount coupon, shipping took about 2 weeks to holland.
The laser came in some plastic bubble wrap, no presentation case or anything, but seems to have survived the trip unharmed. 2 cheap AAA batteries were included, which i'll use for my clock or someting. For testing i used 2 full NiMH batteries instead.
Power is impressive straight away.. insert batteries, press button, it kinda flickers for half a second and then goes on to full power, and it stays there for a very impressive amount of time for a laser this size running on AAA's.I've measured output building my homebuilt powergauge*. It recorded 49 mW after the first minute, 52 after the second and stayed around there for another two minutes or so. I stopped measuring after that.
Temperature optimum seems to be a little over room temp, perhaps 22-25 degrees or so. Warming it further causes lower output power. Current consumption was a steady 220 mA at ~2.4 volts regardless of temperature, havent tried different voltages yet.
I compared it to a very good DX30 (true). The LS laser has a silver battery container, but is also of different construction. The whole unit is about 1 cm shorter, the tip at the aperature is about half the size of that on the DX. More interesting, the output beam is considerably broader, indicating at least different optics. I haven't opened it so far, since i'm quite fond of it.
See picture for beamshots: though fatter right at the aperture, the beam does have very decent divergence (red** and bluray are from aixiz lenses). At 10 m, the beam is smaller than the DX30's, but does have a bit of a 'smear' - could be a blemish on the lens, but isnt a big problem.
In conclusing: Perhaps i got very lucky, but this unit is very well worth its $22!
* readings could be off 10%, but its fair game with a $22 laser like this.
** its a 660 nm, this camera is sensitive to 660 and renders it magenta
The laser came in some plastic bubble wrap, no presentation case or anything, but seems to have survived the trip unharmed. 2 cheap AAA batteries were included, which i'll use for my clock or someting. For testing i used 2 full NiMH batteries instead.
Power is impressive straight away.. insert batteries, press button, it kinda flickers for half a second and then goes on to full power, and it stays there for a very impressive amount of time for a laser this size running on AAA's.I've measured output building my homebuilt powergauge*. It recorded 49 mW after the first minute, 52 after the second and stayed around there for another two minutes or so. I stopped measuring after that.
Temperature optimum seems to be a little over room temp, perhaps 22-25 degrees or so. Warming it further causes lower output power. Current consumption was a steady 220 mA at ~2.4 volts regardless of temperature, havent tried different voltages yet.
I compared it to a very good DX30 (true). The LS laser has a silver battery container, but is also of different construction. The whole unit is about 1 cm shorter, the tip at the aperature is about half the size of that on the DX. More interesting, the output beam is considerably broader, indicating at least different optics. I haven't opened it so far, since i'm quite fond of it.
See picture for beamshots: though fatter right at the aperture, the beam does have very decent divergence (red** and bluray are from aixiz lenses). At 10 m, the beam is smaller than the DX30's, but does have a bit of a 'smear' - could be a blemish on the lens, but isnt a big problem.
In conclusing: Perhaps i got very lucky, but this unit is very well worth its $22!
* readings could be off 10%, but its fair game with a $22 laser like this.
** its a 660 nm, this camera is sensitive to 660 and renders it magenta
