Laser Project

MiGs · Post by **MiGs** » Thu Nov 23, 2006 2:12 am

Ok, well this is my second project ever that requires soldering and electronics know-how, and I have very limited electronics know-how, haha, so I'm looking for some advice at the only place where the ppl actually know their stuff.

Well allright, so I bought one of these Keychain Laser from Fry's for this guitar laser project I wanna do. And what I want to do now is make it run off of AA batteries for longer battery life, and cause it'd be cool. Now, the batteries in the laser are LR41 button batteries seen here. According to that site, they are 1.5v, the same as regular AA akaline batteries. The batteries in the laser are stacked on top of eachother, so I am thinking they are in series which would output a total of 4.5v .

So, to make the laser's battery life last longer with AA's instead of those little LR41's, would I have to wire up 3 AA batteries in series, and wire it up? I read up on batteries at the portables of doom website, and I'm thinking to get more battery life I'd have to wire up batteries in parrallel. So.. ya, any help/advice would be appreciated

thanks.

MiGs · Post by **MiGs** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 6:24 am

Sweet, thanks for the advice and pics there. I went out today and got the some Ni-MH batteries, and a battery holder, and yep, with 4 batteries, the brightness of the laser is insane, should be illegal or something, lol, but anyways, so far so good. I don't like the idea of having to put tape over the button to keep it down so it can be on, so I'll have a go at removing the shell up to the button, and seeing if I can wire in a switch like this:

Its a 3 way slide switch, and I want to wire it so it'll be on-off-on, so I can move the switch it up and down really fast, and get a strobe effect, and hope the laser can take the stress of it all.

I think I'm going to put everything into a small project box, and somehow attach it to the headstock of my guitar, so it can be like shooting out and up when its on. Should be pretty crazy when its done.

Thanks again for the help, and I'll post back when its all finished and done. Later.

Post by **Triton** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 7:50 am

if you want a strobe type effect you could use a 3 pole switch like that but have one of the on position trigger a 555 timer or something so you have off solid on and blinking

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 11:57 am

i dont know if a 555 can drive a laser directly from its output, you might need to use a transistor inbetween

MiGs · Post by **MiGs** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 2:33 am

Ok well I finished my little laser project finally, and here are some not so great pics of it.

Front view:

Rear view:

Side view, you can see the laser pointing out the hole:

And yes, it actually works! (I was surprised):

The insides look pretty messy, I used hot glue to hold the laser in place, so its a little ugly under that cover. I also used this battery holder right here:

I chose that one because it looked the most compact. So anyways, the switch is not totally secured yet, thats why theres 2 pieces of electrical tape holding it in. I guess I'm going to have to just super glue it down one of these days or just leave it like it is. I also bought some velcro strips so I can put it on the back of this and put some on the headstock of my guitar, and have it velcroed on whenever I want it.

Well, there it is, took me about 3hrs which seemed like forever to put it all together, had to basically hand file out the switch hole, and rewire the switch about 3 times, and anotherperson, haha I stole your idea of screwing in a screw into the negative contact spring, for somereason I couldn't get the wire secured into the spring with solder, so I used a little screw, and soldered the wire to that and taped it all up. Works well. So there ya go, thats the end of my laser project, now I just have to get a fog machine and get crazy.

Later.

codeman · Post by **codeman** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 11:38 am

now that you have a more powerful laser, you should start a real laser project. Like taking the reflection of a laser off a window and reproducing any sounds happening inside that room....yeah, that sounds like a tough project.

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 11:55 am

i originally thought he was going to send the sound of his guitar on a laser beam instead of a wire

http://www.eweek.org/2002/DiscoverE/act ... ight.shtml

codeman · Post by **codeman** » Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:31 pm

That would be cool too, but that's pretty easy when you modulate the laser yourself and have as much optical power as you need!