This is a PAQ 4 IR laser as seen through a PVS 14. As you can see, it's projecting two distinct dots. There is a small dot on the right hand side of the main beam. It's way more apparent in person, but much quality gets lost when you're taking photos through the PVS with an iphone. In real life it's not blurry and the stray dot is way more defined. If you're on a phone, you might have to zoom in to see what I'm talking about. If you're on a desktop, it's immediately obvious what I'm talking about.
When I type in "laser projecting two dots" I get a lot of hits for something called mode hopping. Could that be what's wrong here?
Note that I've already ruled out glare on the PVS lens. If you rotate the laser module the stray dot rotates with it. If it were just glare on the PVS lens, then the dot would stay fixed relative to the rotation of the module. I.e. no matter how you rotated it, the dot would always be on the right, but that's not the case. The stray dot will rotate with the laser.
I also cleaned the lens really well to make sure there wasn't any dust on it.
When I type in "laser projecting two dots" I get a lot of hits for something called mode hopping. Could that be what's wrong here?
Note that I've already ruled out glare on the PVS lens. If you rotate the laser module the stray dot rotates with it. If it were just glare on the PVS lens, then the dot would stay fixed relative to the rotation of the module. I.e. no matter how you rotated it, the dot would always be on the right, but that's not the case. The stray dot will rotate with the laser.
I also cleaned the lens really well to make sure there wasn't any dust on it.