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Blu-ray Laser Gadget
i4u writes, "Wicked Lasers has done the unthinkable. They took the sparse blue laser diodes used in Blu-ray Disc drives and are making cool laser gadgets out of them, called Sonar. You can own one of these very limited edition lasers for $1,999.99. The price is that high because Wicked Lasers buys Blu-ray Disc players and removes the Blu-ray diode for the Sonar laser."
OK, so it seems pretty crazy to junk a blu-ray just to grab the laser, but there must be some reason they are doing this other than the publicity, right? Can someone explain the importance of a blue laser over a regular handheld red laser of the same power that sells for ~$20? Or is it just supposed to be cool looking?
... are these so expensive just because they're expensive to make, or is there massive demand that keeps that the price up (and if so, what is that demand based on)?
Looking online, I see that the standard price for blue laser pointers is over $1000 (here's the cheapest I found, which has a longer wavelength and lower power than the Blu-ray)
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
Wouldn't buying a PS3 be cheaper?
No pictures of the beam? All we get to see is an aluminum tube that may or may not have anything inside it?
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
kdawson, is that how much they paid you to get this worthless story on the front page?
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
Nothing to see here, please move on
"The cost of a new Blu-ray disc player combined with international shipping, and import taxes raises the cost of obtaining a 405nm diode in China to approximately $1,500." I smell a lie... why don't they go down the street to the Chinese factory churning out these diodes for $5/unit and leave the marketing BS to Sony?
Don't you know that there's a shortage of blue ray laser diodes?! Every diode you have is another PS3 that some poor kid who is willing to spend $600 doesn't have. Won't you think of the children? Or at least your fellow gamer.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
While they don't have any of the blue laser yet, the Wicked Laser Videos show off their other high-powered products. These things are powerful enough to light a match, blow up a balloon, burn a hole in your drywall, and other fun party tricks. What's cool about it, though, is that the laser is powerful enough to make the backscatter visible. i.e. You can see the beam!
It's enough to make one wonder: How feasible is a handheld laser weapon? (Say, a few watts?) I realize that the key issue is that the laser does very little damage as it passes through an object. (Actually, it leaves a hole the diameter of the beam. Not very large.) However, I could see the laser rotating through a small arc during fire. That would at least carve out a centimeter or two from the target...
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...A $2000 laser pointer which outputs coherent light in the most difficult color spectrum for humans to see. I'll take one and a dozen pet rocks, please!
Hmm, for $2000 I could buy 3 PS3s (maybe just 2 off of eBay) and make two crappy laser pointers myself. The term that leaps to mind is "rip off".
I read the internet for the articles.
Using blu-ray hardware just to get the laser out of it? Won't the manufacturers sell them lasers instead? This seems utterly backwards.
But wow, 2 grand to get a blue laser from some never-before-heard-of company! Why, I'd be owning a piece of history! Where do I sign up?!
Nintendo and Microsoft didn't just toss them in a warehouse after all! Ok, but seriously, who would do this kind of thing without some sort of prompting? I mean really, this is just too far fetched not to buy into a conspiracy theory. Come on, I can't even find any information about this China-based Wicked Laser company. Toshiba? Is that you behind the curtain?
Really now, an independent Blue-Ray laser. For $2000. From China. Nothing suspicious about that!
Demented But Determined.
Two fish swim into a wall, one turns to the other and says, "Dam".
Other "blue" lasers are in the range of 473nm. Given the color responsiveness of the eye these already appear darker than their Red and Green cousins even at similar power output. And you can't really get high power blue lasers.
So given that these are only 20mw and super low on the spectrum, I'd expect these are hardly visible in comparison with other pointers. A unique color, if you can see the damned thing.
Seems pretty pointless to me really... why would anyone buy one?!
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Ah!!! Slashdot has been invaded by spammers! since when are we interested in $1,999.99 laser pointers that are made from a $1,000 drive? First of all it's a rip off, and second it's not news. This is an ad in disguise.
It's a laser... but it's called sonar... it causes an incredible amount of waste to produce... and serves no purpose?
Is it a stupidity detector?
Hooray for blatant advertising?
Seriously, I usually don't complain about this sort of thing (even when Zonk does it), but why the hell did this make it to the front page? It's an ad, nothing more.
fast enough or hold your hand steady enough for that to read the disc???? oh wait... that thing is retarded seriously what kinda idiot would pay $2K for that?
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
This sounds like a job for the Cheat Commandos!
Do not look directly into laser with remaining eye!
Why bother.
...well timed to coincide with the (non) launch of the PS3. Given that it's made the front page of Slashdot, I'd say quite a successful one. I am sure there are many slashdotters who would be interested in their other (cheaper and more practical) lasers.
New cat toy! I can't wait to give this to my cat. Plus in most areas its illegal to point lasers at anything that isn't white. Or at least not at airplanes. Its now a federal offense.
It's probably just yellow cake...
$2k for a laser to show off to your friends.
$10k for corrected surgery to attempt to salvage vision after someone peeks at the source.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
gharragghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrsgpkhjsiojhosih
I smell a lie... why don't they go down the street to the Chinese factory churning out these diodes for $5/unit and leave the marketing BS to Sony?
What makes you think that isn't exactly what they're doing now? They're probably not $5- more like $50/100, especially in single unit quantities...some laser diodes ARE pretty pricey. And then you need a drive circuit, though nothing specific to this type of diode, most likely. I also doubt they're being made in china; South Korea, Japan...maybe Malaysia. Japanese electronics manufacturers moved out of China as fast as they moved in, because of very high bin rates.
Even if they DO buy the blu-ray players, they're selling or stockpiling parts for when the blu-ray machines break. None of the manufacturers will want to service the systems. They'll want people to grumble, throw last year's unit in the trash, and buy next year's model; same reason I wouldn't expect the first units to be very reliable. Repair prices from the manufacturer will be sky high, and the market ripe for a replacement-parts company.
Please help metamoderate.
Idiots like these guys sell this crap because there are rich idiots somewhere who buy it, and other idiots elsewhere who read about it, and other idiots who write... hang on...
This message was scanned by European governments and contains no terrorism.
But can it be mounted on a shark?
What a shameful waste of a scarce commodity. Not that I care that much, cuz I'm an HD-DVD man.
Stop shining that blu-ray into my eyes, it's too overrated!
"Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig." - Bertrand Russell
Cutting the brain or heart in two is ineffective if cauterized?
with remaining eye.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
It stands for "Amazing Misuse of Resources," and this acronym comes from a KDE toy that features little roaming characters on screen.
I once had a signature.
weaponization of lasers on the "handheld" scale. The flying "anti-satellite" laser that the DOD has is packed in a commercial-airliner-sized jet, and a good portion of that space is taken up by energy storage. At this point, even vehicle-mounted lasers aren't really practical, even when you're talking about some wheeled vehicle large enough to crate around a generator. In any "man-portable" laser weapon, the difficulty isn't the laser itself, it's carrying around the power storage/generation unit.
It's possible that we'll eventually be able to have "laser pistols" but for now, you'd be foiled by the lack of a long enough extension cord.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
yeah it's blue and pretty but it's 20 mW. That may be double the legal limit already in the US as far as I've heard, but apparently you can get a blue laser diode on Ebay that's 100 mW, that's right I said 100 mW for $3,100 and are suggested for "aerial output." I'd go with the upgrade. And of course dual 500 mW green lasers are about $5,800 and are meant for aerial displays also. Reccomended use is outdoors :P Who knew you could buy ridiculously overly-powerful laser products on Ebay?
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Huh? It would only be unthinkable if they sold these for like $100. What's unthinkable when they purchase ridiculously expensive Blu-ray drives and reuse their lasers in ridiculously expensive products? Is the weird and "unthinkable" part that the lasers can at all be disassembled, or what, exactly?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Just enter/paste (dpss) (laser,lasers) (blue) into the ebay search box?
I have a 10mw 473 Blue laser for sale: $500
Regards,
Ken
The green ones are both frickin' bright and not super priced, you can get a good 'aftermarket' (read: greater than stupid 5mw im-retarded-and-will-shine-only-in-eyes "prevention") one for a hundred bucks or less.
As for useful, if you do any outdoors stuff out in the boonies (camping, hiking etc) its worth that for peace of mind alone. Wave it across a field of grass or something like that at night, *nobody* will miss it, guaranteed. Shine at planes during the day if you're sitting off a ledge with a broken leg, it will give you something to do while you grit your teeth to block out the pain. (note: doing that in non emergencies != smart)
Anybody who buys one of these needs a fucking slap.
God Be Gone
Perhaps it'd work better underwater than red or green lasers, since those wavelengths are more absorbed by the water... I don't know which would be the optimal frequency though.
You can already get cheapish green laser pointers that are powerful enough to backscatter and are used for example by stargazers to point something in the sky to their buddies.
What concerns me is if these are immediately dangerous to the eye from a distance. If dangerous enough, they should be seen as weapons and regulated that way.
This shit gets posted and not my stem cell research?
"Seems pretty pointless to me"
You, Sir, are a genius of the highest order in regard to accidental puns. Bravo, I say, bravo.
From TFA:
"The cost of the Sonar is mainly due to the high price of laser diodes which are taken from Blu-ray disc players. The cost of a new Blu-ray disc player combined with international shipping, and import taxes raises the cost of obtaining a 405nm diode in China to approximately $1,500."
Either these guys a clinically stupid, or they're totally full of shit.
You can buy a brand new, already-imported, Sony BD-RW drive for under $500 according to the PC Connection catalog that is on my desk right now, and you can get a Sony standalone player for $799. They're paying $1500 for them? I bet they making the whole thing up and he's just holding a piece of (poorly) machined aluminum or a regular laser pointer in the picture. It's a ploy to get you to go to their website that you wouldn't have ever heard of otherwise. They priced it at $2k so that nobody would buy one, and they're hoping you'll pick up an overpriced green pointer while you're there.
Sony finds yet another way to screw us!
Hobby Robotics
Brilliant!
I thought you needed a license to buy and/or sell lasers over certain power ratings (above Class IIIa)?
Umm....... there is one of these on sale at Thinkgeek (Another OSTG Website) for $999 http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/lights/896a/
"Gentlemen, You cannot fight in here, this is the War Room...." - Dr Strangelove
Ugh. What the hell were they thinking calling a laser device "Sonar"? In case anyone here doesn't know (and any geek *should*), 'sonar' refers to the sound-based systems used by various marine vessels, submarines in particular, to navigate and locate other ships. I've also heard it used to refer to bats' natural navigation system. 'Sonar' means Sound Navigation and Ranging. As an ex Submarine Sonar Tech I'm aghast that a supposed tech company would make such a stupid mistake.
-chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
I mean why take the laser diodes used in Blu-ray disk drives out? Why not just get them from the same place Blu-ray gets theirs? Wouldn't that be a bit cheaper?
'sig' deleted due to the stupidity of it's 'nature'
Mine is 1/8 Watt, green, looks just like a common laser pointer on the outside. In my opinion, Wicked Lasers is a reputable company.
I can pop balloons if they are dark colored. I can melt electrical tape. I can light a match if I color it with a Sharpie first.
If I shine it on the back of my hand, I don't feel anything. If I take a pen and make a black dot on my hand, then it hurts pretty bad.
I have to be within a couple of feet of the balloon to pop it. You have to hold your hand very steady to do this. I have to be within inches of the match. I cannot ignite liquids. I wanted to start my charcoal with it, but I have been unable. Another problem is the reflected light is so freaking bright that you cannot see anything for a minute or so if you look at the target while you are doing your tricks.(It came with safety sunglasses, but then you can't see anything else at night when you are wearing them.)
Cooling is a big design problem. I don't think that the laser diodes were originally designed to run continuously.
The reason that you can see the beam of a green laser and not a red one is because Rayleigh Scattering is frequency dependant. A violet beam should scatter even more than a green one. So the beam should be more visible unless the decreased sensitivity of the human eye to the violet color cancels this out.
Since this violet laser is more powerful than my green one, you should be able to do more things with it, such as light a cigarette. You could probably pop balloons at a greater distance, too. Your common laser pointers are less than 5 mW. This violet one is close to 200 mW.
Hmm...let's see... if I had to spend $2000 on a Wicked Lasers portable laser, would I pay for a 20mW Blu-Ray laser that's supposed to be cool 'cuz it's blue, or a 300mw green laser that's supposed ot be cool since it can burn through certain materials? Choices, choices...
Thank God it's $2,000 for one of those damn things. The intense, blinding blue LEDs are annoying enough so I can't imagine just how annoying a blue laser would be. At least the pricing keeps the average jackass from pointing a Blue Death Ray laser at my eyes at a concert, sports event, or while I'm driving.
Too bad I can't do anything about how managers will spend their bonus money...(and I know a couple who would love to do their damn Powerpoints with this thing...)
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I've seen someone use a green laser pointer during a meeting for a presentation. It's just waay to distracting. Not because it's green, but because it was so bright! It almost hurt my eyes to look at it. It's like staring at a bright light bulb across the room. Not something that helps your vision as you'd get ghost images of it after looking around. I guess a blue laser pointer would be okay, but not if it's extraordinarily bright.
Considering you can get the blue lasers out of HD-DVD players for 1/2 the price, this is an incredibly inefficient way to make laser pointers unless the idea is to leach off the Blu-ray brand.
Their blue laser pointer only costs a grand. Of course you don't get the uber-cool titanium alloy and you probably can't burn a hole in someone like you can with the Wicked Laser but if you don't need those cool features you could save yourself a grand on thinkgeek.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
A lot of Slashdot users are bashing this company because it has created an expensive and sort of pointless product.
I don't understand why people complain. This product is obviously not intended for Wal*Mart or Best Buy. It's a high-tech gadget designed to appeal to the very same people who would care spending $5,000 on 3D glasses. It was never meant to sell for 179,99. Instead, it's just a nifty gadget and just a fraction of comparable items out there that are overpriced but neat.
The day everyone will need a pocket laser will be the day that the Blu-Ray handheld laser will be on sale for less than a 100 bucks.
Full Tilt
I just want to point out that lasers purchased from WickedLasers.com are EXTREMELY dangerous! Most of their lasers will blind you indefinetly even if the beam accidentaly gets reflected off of something and hits your eye for merely a second! Your blink reaction is NOT fast enough to block the permanent damage!
This is not a joke, this is the truth, and im not even using sarcasm. DO NOT BUY THEIR LASERS AS A TOY and if you do buy one, lock it up as if it is a weapon. If it somehow got into the wrong hands like for instance some noob who goes on an annoy people spree... well... lets just say I don't want to be one of the unlucky people permanently blinded by said person.
What color laser does the Xbox 360's HD DVD player accessory use?
Which kind of idiot would pay $2K for it? Perhaps the same kind if idiot who would pay $140K for an H1 Hummer...
There are lots of people willing to pay ridiculous amounts of money for excessive items.
This ranks right up there with burning down a forest because someone wants a spotted owl as a pet, or owning a humvee. I feel sad those who can justify the waste of natural resources for the sake of ego.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
i hate to be that guy, but sonar is based on sound waves. radar is based on radio waves. the acronym (you did know that SONAR, RADAR, and LASER are all acrnyms, right?) they are looking for is LIDAR which stands for Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
Boy, this sure is retarded. Why destroy a blu-ray player, when you can just *buy* a bare diode? I never liked wicked lasers much, and this seals the fucking deal.
... here.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Nuclear pumped laser. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzap!
so when shall I expect a 2D holograph projector to be sold?
There's something faintly obscene about dropping $2000 in a trinket toy when there are people that can't afford to pay their heating bills, eat or get medical attention.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Does anyone know if a sufficiently powerful laser would zap the CCD of a speed camera? Strikes me as a more benign use of a decent laser :-).
[I'm obviously assuming it's a cash cow speed camera, not one that addresses genuine problems]
This is why we use the preview button.
breath... the... stupidity... is too... thick...
Gaaaaaaaaa!!! I can't take it!!! Is there any limit for lameness?!?!?!?
Sorry my fellow slashdotters for this post that doesn't add anything to the subject. But this is too lame for me to not to take it off my chest. Sorry again. I hope you all forgive me someday.
So say we all
So hot it burns a hole in my wallet!
Jedi sword.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
Hi, Good day, its very interesting to read your comments, some are very insightful. Let me explain why we used a Blu-ray laser disc player to obtain the laser diodes. The reason is that there are only 2 manufactureres (Nichia, and Sony) that manufacture Blu-ray diodes in all of the world, and they are located in Japan. When the project was first envisioned two months ago, we called Nichia to obtain pricing on a diode, the cost quoted for 100pc was 2000$ US per unit, but the problem lied in the fact if we could ever get them, as there are global shortages of blu-ray diodes. We had to find a better way to create this laser. Our alternate plan, which was the one we ended up going with was to buy Blu-ray disc players* from the USA, and have them shipped into China. This was a slightly cheaper and also more reliable way of guaranteeing we would have something soon. Our profit margin on this product is by far the lowest compared to all our other products, and at this point we are in the negative from the development of this product. We hope to make this money back through a few sales, but we believe that in the long run, the world will know that Wicked Lasers is willing to innovate; that all true laser enthusiasts will recongize our efforts and help us revolutionize the world of lasers. Lastly, some of you believe that we have targeted Slashdot as a "slashvertisement". However, we had no intention of seeing this story out on Slashdot, it came as a pleasant surprise. In fact, we were hoping that with i4u.com (the original poster of the story), we could gain some publicity in their tech-oriented crowd. We are very proud that Slashdot has acknowledged this story, and we hope that we will have something even more newsworthy to give to you guys next time! Thank you for your time to read my reply. Best Regards, Steve Liu CEO *Blu-ray disc players are not released in China, the only option is to purchase a Sony AR Laptop at 3,500$ to obtain the Blu-ray drive. At the time of this project conception HD-DVD XBOX drives were not yet released. We will be considering cheaper options in the future to offer a better price to our customers.
Hi, Good day, its very interesting to read your comments, some are very insightful. Let me explain why we used a Blu-ray laser disc player to obtain the laser diodes. The reason is that there are only 2 manufactureres (Nichia, and Sony) that manufacture Blu-ray diodes in all of the world, and they are located in Japan. When the project was first envisioned two months ago, we called Nichia to obtain pricing on a diode, the cost quoted for 100pc was 2000$ US per unit, but the problem lied in the fact if we could ever get them, as there are global shortages of blu-ray diodes. We had to find a better way to create this laser.
Our alternate plan, which was the one we ended up going with was to buy Blu-ray disc players* from the USA, and have them shipped into China. This was a slightly cheaper and also more reliable way of guaranteeing we would have something soon. Our profit margin on this product is by far the lowest compared to all our other products, and at this point we are in the negative from the development of this product. We hope to make this money back through a few sales, but we believe that in the long run, the world will know that Wicked Lasers is willing to innovate; that all true laser enthusiasts will recongize our efforts and help us revolutionize the world of lasers.
Lastly, some of you believe that we have targeted Slashdot as a "slashvertisement". However, we had no intention of seeing this story out on Slashdot, it came as a pleasant surprise. In fact, we were hoping that with i4u.com (the original poster of the story), we could gain some publicity in their tech-oriented crowd. We are very proud that Slashdot has acknowledged this story, and we hope that we will have something even more newsworthy to give to you guys next time! Thank you for your time to read my reply.
Best Regards,
Steve Liu CEO
http://www.wickedlasers.com/ [wickedlasers.com]
*Blu-ray disc players are not released in China, the only option is to purchase a Sony AR Laptop at 3,500$ to obtain the Blu-ray drive. At the time of this project conception HD-DVD XBOX drives were not yet released. We will be considering cheaper options in the future to offer a better price to our customers.
**I apologize for the double-post, don't know how to edit formatting in the other post.
If you look at their product overview page here: http://www.wickedlasers.com/products_overview.php
c e
And scroll on down to the red Pulsar laser, take a good hard look at the image there. Does it look familiar?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-Strike:_Sour
It couldn't possibly be from the box art (and background) of Counter Strike: Source could it? Oh no no no. This is a reputable company that makes quarity product in China! Why they'd have no need at all to steal images for their own marketing.
What a stupid product.
I want one.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.