Controlling a bunch of servos
A friend just asked a quick question: How can I make a bunch of cheap (not fast) laser shutters? Here’s a quick answer: For motors, servos are pretty easy to use. Put a piece of black material on the arm of the servo if the laser is weak and this is safe to do. Alternatively, put a mirror on it and direct the beam to a beam block.
Drive the servo motors with an Arduino. Here’s a demo on how you can hook it up.
Piece of cake. Give this job to a barely conscious undergrad.
Here’s a shopping list, all from Sparkfun (not sponsored– just a good company):
Arduino – $25
Breakout board – $13
5v adapter – $6
Servo – $13
USB cable – $5
Header pins – $1.50
If you want to control them from switches, that’s easy to implement with the Arduino directly. Alternatively, you can use Processing (with Firmata) and make a simple GUI interface on the host computer.
An alternative (and more expensive) approach is to use linear actuators and an IO board from Phidgets.
you can also repurpose hard disk drives to actually get high-speed shutters.
http://optics.ph.unimelb.edu.au/atomopt/publications/shutter_rsi75_p3077_2004.pdf
Nice! Thanks for sharing this.
It reminds me of using cellophane as a half wave plate:
http://labrigger.com/blog/2012/11/22/cellophane-as-a-half-wave-plate/
I like the simple servo controllers :
http://www.pololu.com/product/1352
They can control rotary servos as well as linear servos (http://www.firgelli.com/). Computer interface is provided and making a GUI in labview or matlab is relatively straight forward. Rotary servos can be used for slow shutters as mentioned, motorizing waveplates, correction collars, mirrors, etc. and the linear servos are great for adjusting components in the axial direction.