w00t! w00t! w00t!
Yeehaw! After 2 weeks of fiddling and tweaking I FINALLY got the monochromator in my Lab to work!
Errr better backtrack a bit there for those who don't understand that (i.e. everyone who might read this)...
See, I currently am working on writing in an entirely graphical software "language" called LabVIEW. Its gonna drive a piece o' kit (the monochromator) to scan the laser beam, and then it'll take the data and record a graph for me. But the bastard MC hasnt been responding. After pestering my supervisor about it, he finally said "Oh, well I suppose you could TRY using the power supply that came with it, but I thought we wouldnt need that". Makes me sound stupid until you realise it was plugged into the PC via a COM port and had a small amount of power from that. I figured that was enough, and he just provided me with the little bugger and didn't even TELL me it came with a seperate power lead. BAH!
Plugged it in, ran the prog and w00t! It worked! Victory dance! YAy! (but not with my supervisor watching)
Class 4 lasers are FUN! Burnt a hole in a piece of card today. Sounds a bit crap, but it amused me. They are even powerful enough that you can see the beam itself without needing dry ice like they have at Laser Quest. (usually when you fire a lower class 1 or 2 laser, you just get a little red spot at the point youre shingit at and dont see the beam, but this emits a nice green column of light)
I'm gonna take a pic of the pretty part of the experiment and post it up. It's worth a look-see!
Errr better backtrack a bit there for those who don't understand that (i.e. everyone who might read this)...
See, I currently am working on writing in an entirely graphical software "language" called LabVIEW. Its gonna drive a piece o' kit (the monochromator) to scan the laser beam, and then it'll take the data and record a graph for me. But the bastard MC hasnt been responding. After pestering my supervisor about it, he finally said "Oh, well I suppose you could TRY using the power supply that came with it, but I thought we wouldnt need that". Makes me sound stupid until you realise it was plugged into the PC via a COM port and had a small amount of power from that. I figured that was enough, and he just provided me with the little bugger and didn't even TELL me it came with a seperate power lead. BAH!
Plugged it in, ran the prog and w00t! It worked! Victory dance! YAy! (but not with my supervisor watching)
Class 4 lasers are FUN! Burnt a hole in a piece of card today. Sounds a bit crap, but it amused me. They are even powerful enough that you can see the beam itself without needing dry ice like they have at Laser Quest. (usually when you fire a lower class 1 or 2 laser, you just get a little red spot at the point youre shingit at and dont see the beam, but this emits a nice green column of light)
I'm gonna take a pic of the pretty part of the experiment and post it up. It's worth a look-see!