Hey there,
I’m not sure if this has been asked already, but I’m struggling to build a circuit using lasers and laser receiver sensors. It should be pretty easy, but I’m new to this and everything I can find online involves lasers that have 3 pins (one for power, one for ground and one for a pin on the board). Mine only have two, power and ground. These are the lasers and these are the receiver sensors.
Can these two work together? I can’t seem to write a sketch that makes them work if the lasers have no pins assigned. All I’m trying to do is send via serial the beam value (if it’s blocked by something or not).
This may be a very stupid question but I’m really stuck. Thanks in advance for the help!
I can't read German but since there are only two leads it tells me it's a laser diode . In that respect it functions like a regular LED. You'll need to find out the polarity, voltage, current and power dissipation specs for the laser to use it effectively without destroying it.
Sorry, there's an English version of the page but I linked the wrong one. This is what it says:
A laser module with an input voltage of 5V.
Input current around 25mA. So a transistor might be necessary.
Color: red
Wavelength: 650nm
Power (light emitting): <5mW
Diameter laser head: 6mm
Red wire is plus and Blue wire is minus.
If its a bare laser diode you'll need to drive it constant current, if the unit has a driver circuit built in then
it just runs from 5V and manages its own current. The latter seems more likely given the description, but
I personally would try running it from a lab supply set to 20mA current limit and see if it can handle 5V.