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choice of microcontroller to turn on a high powered laser

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chhavigandhi

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Hi !

I want to turn on a 405nm, 150mW laser diode using a microcontroller. Can anybody suggest me which uC will be best to do this function?

Also if i use MSP430 launchpad to receive RF signal and turn on laser diode with laser driver circuit attached to it, is this feasible?
 

ANY uC with an available GPIO can turn on the driver circuit...
Is it all it has to do ?
Describe the whole system please...
 

Alright. let me explain the whole system.

I am trying to build a system in which there is a transmitter and a receiver. transmitter will send a signal via rf tx and fr rx receives and passes signal to uC and this turns on laser module. Now laser module has to be high powered laser because this has to be used to burn some material
pls see what i have made and let me know if i am going wrong: https://prntscr.com/1azb81

i read somewhere that if laser is high powered theen msp430 might not be able to drive the circuit of the laser. please clarify this.

thank you.
 

thank you jayanth for all these links. I have gone through them before. First one is IR laser, i need visible light one for safety.
iC-HT is a wonderful product but it is just a driver i need to interface uC with it. will msp430 be ok? also it has very less online support, if i am stuck i have no one to ask.
 

The uC doesn't drive the laser directly. It merely switches on and off the high power side of the laser driving circuitry...
So yes. ANY uC will work.

Please provide details about the laser driver that you're using...
 

shaiko, thanks for replying. i will be using **broken link removed**

Can I use Arduino development board for this project. I am a vlsi chip designing student and very new to all this. This project is silly but I want to make it work :D

MSP430 has input voltage range of 1.8-3.6V and laser driver requires 5-6V

- - - Updated - - -


Is it possible to use uC to just turn on a switch which connects battery and laser driver?
 

Use a MOSFET transistor that can handle ~200mA. Connect the output of your uC to the gate of the transistor through a 1K resistor.
 

Then use uC which work at 5V. Any PIC, 8051, AVR uCs will do.
Click to expand...
By itself, a uC (even with 5V capable IO's) cannot drive 200mA...
 

i did similar kind of project with AVR atmega 32, and it worked well, u can think over using it
 

You can see from the picture that the laser driver has only 2 wire connected to the PCB. These are clearly the 5V power input wires - not some 5V control signal...
 

you can use PWM out to control the status of laser, 100% duty cycle means completely on, 0% duty cycle off and the intensity can be controlled by intermediate duty cycles, u need only two wire connection for this purpose
 

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