Any ideas? On what i should do?

bump

laser tripwire that has a sexy voice saying hello when you walk in

and what? no wire?

go to the home improvement store, they sell it in all flavors fairly cheap

Another lazer tripwire? I can't do that. >_< I don't have enough cable.

ok ok fine no wire ...

try beaming a serial signal across the room using the laser

What do you mean beaming a signal?

hook up the laser to an output and see if you can ReCreate* the signal on the other side using your phototransistors

*eh eh! bad pun on your name, ++props :-?

What do you mean beaming a signal?

I assume Osgeld is referring to a morse-code type of communication that sends messages by flashing on/off the laser and receiving it on the diode. I'm pretty sure I've seen someone (Make Magazine, perhaps?) doing this just by hooking up the laser to the TX pin, and then hooking the photodiode to the RX pin, and using serialPrint() and serialRead().

course you could just do a laser tripwire by putting batteries on the laser and the arduino as the receiver

::slight_smile:
:-/
:o
(runs away quickly!)

Hmmm...Like a data transfer link? Hmmm...

Check this:

There appears to be a problem. On the RX pin when no data is being sent it is at about 3V(judging by the dim-ness of the LED) and when data is sent it goes even lower to, i guess, 1V. Is this right?

have a meter?

(and I dont know i havent messed with the serial pins yet)

Not really...I know someone who does though. But the cable is messed up...

well the holidays are apon us, and they can be had pretty cheaply (I saw a pretty decent model @ k-mart for like 12 bucks)

These are one of the few "MUST HAVE" tools when fiddling with electronics (along with some wire nippers)

Well yeah, But I'd be nice if i could get this working before Christmas. :wink:

Ill go look at it In a little bit

Ok...

On my bare bones arduino with nothing attached to the serial ports but probes (no ftdi or serial converter for programming) here is what I observed

When the unit is on the tx line stays high @ 5 volts, and when it sends data the pin is pulled low, course even at 300 baud this is going to seem like a pwm effect

PWM effect? To me it looked like it was flickering...that was when data was being sent...
So on for nothing and off for something? That does not sound right. :P(that explains why I got electrocuted even when not sending any data >_<)

But what would explain the dim-ness of the laser?

the rapid on off pulses (and yea its right, just inverted) or maybe the ftdi chip is sucking some for itself