BETA Delays

[nka]

1. Laser on/off problems - The laser module in the Peachy has its own current limiting circuit, and working with that circuit has been a real pain for many reasons:

- Sometimes we get a shipment of lasers with a completely different circuit
(Even after testing our sample lasers, we ordered more and received 500 lasers we have never seen before).
- There is no schematic for these laser’s circuits and they have many unmarked components.
- It turns out that the laser uses varying amounts of current to start and run the laser.
- Some of them do erratic things.

It took us much longer than we expected just to turn the laser on and off! It sounds like such a simple thing to do, but it turns out that we ended up having to use a 10 amp mosfet to turn it on/off simply because the laser uses really high spikes of current to turn on and to run. It’s sort of like having to use a jackhammer to press the gas pedal on you car.

Rylan added this :

In fact we are already working on our own current limiting ciruit so that we wont have this problem in the future.To prevent further delays to the Beta tester group we have orderd circuits that work with the lasers we have now.

We will take the time to do the r and d of our own laser driver and put it on our own circuit before we order the next batch of peachy circuits.


We will make it even more hackable while were at it because this way if you want to change lasers all you need to do is change out the laser diode.

not the hole laser( circuit, lens , aperture, heat sink, focus ring)

It's amazing IMO !