How dangerous is this laser?

[flaring afro]

I have a projector setup and have been looking into ways of getting wiimotes to work well with it and found a source that pointed the IR light at the wall so the wiimotes thought the sensor bar was there. I am considering getting 2 AixiZ 980nm 5mW laser diodes on ebay and mounting them on my projector that's roughly 8ft high and 12ft from the wall it's projecting on. I planned on rigging it so they were only on with the projector, so no one would want to be starring right up at them since the projector bulb itself would be intense. It's very possible someone will accidentally glance up at it though, which I thought would be ok since they are only 5mW but I guess I'm not very educated in the matter either. Does this setup sound dangerous or are the lasers too weak for it to be a concern?

 

[InfinitusEquitas]

The setup is dangerous.

The reason 5mW is considered to be the safety threshold is because of the blink reflex.

With IR lasers, the blink reflex will not work, if someone were to stare into the laser unknowingly, they could have eye damage.

 

[flaring afro]

Ok thanks. Do you think that the concept in general is dangerous, even without a laser? I found this page where a guy did it without lasers, but I'm guessing if the fairly weak laser is dangerous, the focused LEDs powerful enough to leave dots on the wall would be dangerous too...

Sprites mods - Virtual Wii Sensor-bar - Theory

I bought 2 Osram SFH4231s on Ebay. These little critters manage to output 2.2W of IR-light at 940nm, the wavelength at which the WiiMote is purported to work best. They need a steady current of 1A to do this, though.

The leds actually have an emission angle of 120 degrees... the light would now be spread at an angle of 30

 

[Blord]

Instead of IR laser diodes you can use ordinary high-power IR LED's. It works just fine with Wii.