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."

Comments

Beyond publicity, is there a point?

[Salvance]

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?

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) ... 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)?

Re:Beyond publicity, is there a point?

[Associate]

Sucker frequency: 1.67x10^-2Hz

Re:Beyond publicity, is there a point?

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Can someone explain the importance of a blue laser over a regular handheld red laser of the same power that sells for ~$20?

It's blue.

Re:Beyond publicity, is there a point?

[ottffssent]

Blue is cool. Also, hard to do. Between the two, you get expensive.

Red lasers are cheap because they're cheap to make, though the suspiciously cheap ones are, indeed, suspiciously cheaply made. Green lasers are pretty close to the human eye's peak responsiveness, so they appear brighter at a given power level than red or blue lasers.

There are all manner of lasers. CO2, Argon, and other gas lasers. Chemical lasers. Diode lasers. And several other varieties. Hand-held (and small bench) lasers are commonly diode lasers. Low-power red laser diodes are approximately free, which is why they show up everywhere. Infrared laser diodes aren't terribly expensive, even fairly high-powered ones. There is no such thing as a green laser diode. Hand-held green lasers are DPSS lasers, in which a high power infrared laser blasts a fancy neodymium compound that outputs a different infrared frequency that in turn hits a frequency-doubling crystal which finally outputs 532nm green light.

The take-home message here is that blue laser light is hard to get so it's expensive. It's also not terribly useful unless you actually need the high frequency for denser data packing. Green laser light is harder to get than red laser light, but in addition to looking cool it legitimately is more visible per watt. Check out the CIE luminosity function - 650nm red light appears about 8x dimmer per watt than 532nm green light. A $100 15mW green laser therefore should appear almost as bright as a $200 200mW red laser. Even though production of green laser light is less efficient than production of red laser light, the green laser should consume somewhat less power than the red one.

You fool!

[UnknowingFool]

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.

Barely Visible!

[Myriad]

Sheesh, this thing is down at 405nm... that's almost at the bottom of the visible spectrum. The funny thing is, that's so low it's not even blue anymore - it's violet!

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?!

Re:WTF?

[nietsch]

Well we are being told that it has a 3 Volt lithium battery in it and a 20 mW blue laser, so we can take guesses how long you can play with this blue laser thingie before the battery runs down.

Honestly, this is one of the most hollow slashvertisments I have seen in a long time. They are selling something, but we are not told why it is so good to spend 2K on it. My gues is they have bought 0 (zero) BlueRay players and created a mockup so somebody would pay them to take a blueray player apart (and put it's laser into a useless thingie).

$2k laser

[neuro.slug]

But can it be mounted on a shark?

Total Bullshit

[ivan256]

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.