On that page, it looks like the one I have, but it says KEYES on it, not nda or x1nda.
I've figured out that it uses 5V, so I am wondering if it is just to plug it in and give it 5V, or if I need to think of any other considerations.
Hi,
What do you want to do with it?? if powered by 5v it will send out a beam of RED light, this can be used to detect movement or objects, a simple FET circuit will turn it ON/OFF via an Arduino pin.
Take a look on the example or Playground pages for more info.
These modules all look the same but seem to come from different manufactures!!
Beware it's a laser and can damage your eyes......
I am looking through some modules I got, which doesn't say whats what, so I was just playing, really.
I got it working now, thanks!
Do I really need a FET circuit? I connect the signal pin to pin 2, and wrote HIGH/LOW to it.
I can see I need a FET circuit if I wanted a laser with more than 5V supply.
To detect stuff with the laser, would I typically use a photoresistor? Or was it something else you thought of?
To detect stuff with the laser, would I typically use a photoresistor?
Typically no. photo resistors or LDRs are quite slow in their operation and do require a diffuse beam covering all the active area to work efficently.
The up side is that they are easy to align.
Normally you would used a photo transistor or better still a PIN photo diode.
These have a little resistor soldered at the back of the module which limits the current, you should be safe driving it directly from an arduino pin, the current is far less than 40ma.. more like 5ma I guess, but use a multimeter and be sure it is less than 40ma before directly driving it..
kjelelokk:
Do I really need a FET circuit? I connect the signal pin to pin 2, and wrote HIGH/LOW to it.
I can see I need a FET circuit if I wanted a laser with more than 5V supply.
The laser in question should draw about 27 mA, so you can just power it directly from an Arduino pin.
kjelelokk:
To detect stuff with the laser, would I typically use a photo-resistor? Or was it something else you thought of?
This depends entirely on what you want to do with it. If you propose communications, then a photo-resistor is indeed too slow. For a beam interruption detector, it is just fine. You can connect a photo-resistor from a pin to ground and enable the internal pullup of the Arduino. You do need to have a light-proof tunnel in front of the photo-resistor to exclude all light but the narrow laser beam - a piece of black plastic straw a couple of inches long should be just fine for this.
