[Mr Beam] sent this in yesterday, but I didn’t have a chance to get it up til now. These guys are using a 2Kw laser to heat up their instant coffee and tea. Sure, it’s not a hack, but [Eliot] wanted it up, and who doesn’t want their own 2Kw Laser?
Laser Hacks664 Articles
Build Your Own Laser Spectrograph
The news is awash about a 17 year old girl who won a $100,000 scholarship for her spectrograph, but nobody actually linked to information about the thing. After some digging around, I located [Mary]’s web site. It’s a work in progress, but I found an early version of her spectrograph build. The picture shows her project with a spectrograph head made for a meade telescope. Hopefully she’ll get documentation of her spectrograph head up soon. This is one of the better uses I’ve seen for a 5mw green laser.
I forgot to mention her sweet dobsonian telescope build. Very nice work.
Micron Laser Beam Analyser
[David] sent in his laser beam analyzer project. It’s a complete analysis system built from off the shelf hardware. Even if you’re not into lasers, the project combines several technologies that are useful for the hardware hacker. A laser beam is focused to shine onto a spinning reflector. Beam signal is attenuated by adjusting the distance with a stepper actuated sled. The beam is then measured using various sensors.
I thought we were due for a laser hacks category, so I created it and added some of the older laser hacks to it.
Coilosapien: Rail Gun On Yer Robot
It’s been a while since we’ve seen anything new on the robosapien front, but I’d say that a laser sighted rail gun for our favorite robots is worthy. From the video, it appears to have decent accuracy and a fair sized clip. It’s creator, [Marcus] says that he’ll have a tutorial up soon. Thanks to [Robert] for the tip. (Update: The tip says it’s a mini rail gun, so I’m not sure if it’s a rail gun or a coil gun.)
RS-232 Serial Laser Link
[ashish] sent in this one via the tips line. (Ed Note: link rot. Try this one.) It’s a project to create a laser based RS-232 link. It’s based on cheap laser pointers, a MAX232 and a photo-resistor to receive the signal.
Airsoft Turret 2.0
[Jared] posted the latest version of his remote control airsoft gun. The new one allows USB and R/C control. It’s got four seperate firing mechanisms, a laser and uses a pair of servos for motion… and lots of ammo. Whatever you do, don’t make fun of [Jared]. They’ll have video up on the site after a couple of days to save bandwidth.
(Just a note: embed youtube or netscape videos and you’ll have video and save your bandwidth.)
AVR Laser Projector
I’ve seen a few simple DIY laser projectors that just oscillate the beam. This one (scroll past the pong game) has 16 lines of resolution. Sixteen mirrors are rotated by a motor, and an AVR controller pulses the laser to draw the image. Via Asish’s Programming Journal (Worth checking out, he’s been doing several webcam laser pointer projects.)
