Laser Non-Lethal Weapon?

[StridAst]

a flashbang too close to you can still cause lasting effects and too far away and it accomplishes little. A flashbang can start fires (I think an embassy once got burned by the use of some.) Also in broad daylight, the concussive blast does more disorienting then the bright light. It's not a flash only, it's a flashBANG. shock waves are part of the equation. Either way, they are anything but safe. If one went off right in someones face, they would be quite blind. as well as badly burned.... Bottom line is, even flashbangs are effected by the conditions of the pupil. However they have two modes to disorient, and visual is only one of them. Disrupting balance with shock disturbing the fluid in your ear plays a *major* part. With a laser you are trying to incapacitate with light only and no shockwave. Kind of makes things a little harder now doesn't it?

 

[Cyparagon]

perhaps its FAR FAR safer and a lot easier to use high lumen LED flashlights?

Even the ultra-high lumen LEDs are nothing when you compare xenon short-arc lamps or even high wattage halogen lamps.

...2-10hertz. The pulsed operation is the same as human brainwaves and that causes the distrotion and nausea.

Source?

A 3000 lumen flashlight will put out a full watt of light

Huh? It's gotta be more than that. Even if all that light were green, at ~600lm/W, that would need to be 5W of light. Even a perfectly balanced ideal white light source at 5500k is a good 200lm/W which means 15W of light or more.

A 3000 lumen flashlight... consume 10-20 watt electrical power to do that

Sorry if I'm splitting hairs here, but That's 150 to 300lm/W. I don't believe you. You'd need at least 30W to get 3000lm. The only light source I know of that gets 150lm/W at high power is a low-pressure-sodium lamp. Those are way too big to fit in a flashlight and the emitting area is very large which would make the forming of a "beam" virtually impossible. The highest efficiency I've heard of from LEDs may be 150lm/W, but that's only if they are greatly under-driven. And that means they aren't high power.

Another hazard you run into with LED is that the light is generated firstly with a UV source and phosphor to give the visible colour.

No, the VAST majority use blue (450-470nm). Only fluorescent lamps, induction lamps, and coated mercury vapor lamps use UV to excite phosphors. And in that case, residual UV is blocked by the outer bulb made of hard glass.

Look at any white LED you own through a diffraction grating.

 

[Benm]

I mucked up the calculations a bit there indeed. Somehow i just assumed the end result was reasonable - 1 watt of light output for 10-15 watts of electrical input (7 to 10% efficiency).

 

[Arayan]

Source?

I don't remeber precisely, but I think in another general discussion about laser dazzlers. Anyway the data are correct and any dazzler products have a pulse rate between 2-10 hertz, as for example Beijing Laser Work Studio

 

[StridAst]

LOL I love that link. Laser Dazzler! but at the bottom it says "warning: avoid direct eye exposure" lmao

 

[Arayan]

LOL I love that link. Laser Dazzler! but at the bottom it says "warning: avoid direct eye exposure" lmao

yes, I had noticed it too

 

[Cyparagon]

I mean the part about a 2-10hz flash resonating with brainwaves. It sounds like something I would read in youtube comments.

 

[Arayan]

I mean the part about a 2-10hz flash resonating with brainwaves. It sounds like something I would read in youtube comments.

I'm sure that I not having read it on youtube, maybe it comes from Fringe ... however the source is not an international journal with peer review and impact factor

 

[Benm]

And far fetched too... for example, look at stroboscopes in disco's. Those can run at 2 to 10 Hz frequencies and often do, but dont cause disoriention in the audience, despite being darn bright.

The can trigger attacks is sensitive people, but the effect on the average person seems to be completely absent.

 

[Noctis]

Hmm, it all sounds a bit too technical for me. However, the gist of it sounds like it means that while it is suggested that flashing lights SHOULD disorient people, the evidence says otherwise.

But on the other hand, the mass majority of the disorientation effect will only show up under ideal conditions.

In a disco, club, or other event with lots of flashing lights, you certainly won't see too many people getting disoriented by them. However, in those situations, people are given ample opportunity to have their eyes adjust as they walk into the area. We're not talking about suddenly having a light shone into your eyes when you've been wandering around in a pitch black area for the past 30 seconds.

I suppose that's the fine print with the "tactical" flashlights. The SureFire site repeatedly mentions the words, "night-adapted vision", and I was slow to realize. Only now I remember all the past viewings of COPS never showed them shining a Maglite in the suspect's eyes in broad daylight.

However, even in areas with some level of ambient light(which would almost nullify the "blinding" effect), I believe the flashlight serves its purpose. I notice when staring right into a cheap 15 lumens LED light that I can't really see much of the area immediately around the light itself, and I also pay much less attention to my peripheral vision. I suppose the reason why I always see the cops hold their guns next to the light is to prevent the suspect from seeing exactly where it is or what they're holding.

Even if the light doesn't blind, it can still obscure some vision and cause some fear when you have a bright light in your face, loud voices are shouting at you, and you can't see how many are around you or what they're doing.