[Laser] Reasonable Sensitivity Checks ?
TWOSIG at aol.com
TWOSIG at aol.com
Wed Nov 16 20:14:15 EST 2005
A simple check for sensitivity is to point the instrument at a star overhead
and listen to the sound that the twinkle makes. I apologize to the person
who suggested it, but I cannot remember where I read that it would work. It
is supposed to sound like the wind blowing across a microphone - I think
that will depend on frequency response of your system.
You should be able to hear the drop in signal when the light path is
blocked. The method has a lot of problems. However, it might be more "reasonable"
if you go where an astronomy group goes to see the night sky.
Ultimately, the checks you need to do should relate to how you intend to use
the instrument. Not to put too much of a systems engineering spin on it,
but if you define what the requirements are (what do you want the system to
do?) then you can define a way to test if it meets the requirements ( or if it
does not, how well does it work?). If it works, you are done and can go on to
the next project. If it doesn't, you can change something, test it again,
and judge if the change helped or hurt the performance.
James
N5GUI
More information about the Laser
mailing list