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Wicked Lasers Introduces Handheld One-Watt Green Laser
First time accepted submitter (and Slashdot coder) cogent writes "Wicked Lasers, famous for last year's 1000mW handheld blue laser, and infamous for its handling of six-month-long backorders, is now selling a green version. There are three power levels, each priced at $1/mW (300mW, 500mW, 1000mW). Since the eye is far more sensitive to green than to blue, this is pretty much the state of the art in putting-dots-on-stuff technology. Wicked Lasers sent out an email promising to handle backorders much better this time."
Adds reader whitedsepdivine: "There is currently no disclaimer that this is not a lightsaber on their site, so we can only assume that this version is."
Might add a warning that at 1W (1000mW) your eye is 'sensitive' to just about anything in terms of damage from them, whatever color.
Be sure you get good laser protective glasses with one of these things, and whatever you do *do not* aim it or reflect it into anyone's (or any animal's) eyes... its not a "toy".
As cool as this is, you really don't want one. Specular reflections off other surfaces can blind you instantly. There's no way to actually hand hold it with it powered in any remotely safe manner. If it doesn't terrify you, you don't know what you're dealing with, and if it does, you probably don't want one.
No popcorn for me :(
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Nice friggin' lasers. Now we just need some friggin' sharks to go with them.
When I used this laser for my Power Point presentation, the projection screen ended up looking like a kiddy's scissor class had cut it up for a paper doll!
Can any explain why they want one of these exceedingly dangerous "toys" lying around? This seems like the kind of thing that felony reckless depraved indifference assault charges was designed for.
You can give them Money, but unless the FDA allows them into the country, you would need to buy an airline ticket to get one:
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_254.html
unless they have resolved all the issues, which, I doubt.
Take care that this counts as a weapon in many countries and possession without a matching laser-permit can land you in jail. Here you need a permit for any laser class 3 or above, i.e. > 5mW. Also it is very easy to permanently blind someone with this thing by reflection only. If you are stupid enough to point it at a flying airplane or helicopter (quite a few people are), you will go down either as a terrorist or for attempted murder. Or with this thing likely for completed murder as most helicopters and quite a few airplanes do not have a second pilot. Pointing it at a moving car can have the same effect. It is quite amoral to sell these to normal people.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I have one. It'll pop a dark balloon in about 2 seconds. It will light a cigarette.
As for burning things, I pointed it at a piece of 3/4" oak plywood and left it there. After about 5 minutes, it had charred it about 1~2mm deep.
I expect it could have done more but it's not a very focused point. The actual "point" is about 1mm by 4mm at around 50cm. They have a lens kit which has a "Focusing Effect Lens", but I waited about 5 months before cancelling that order so no idea how well it works.
The more obvious issue with it is you can't really show it off to your friends. It comes with one pair of (not very good) glasses, and you really don't want to accidentally ruin someone's eyesight. I ordered 2 pairs of Laser Glasses from dragon lasers, but it's still generally too much of a pain to mess with very often.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
From TFA: "With it's intergalactic range of 85 miles, the S3 Krypton is the first and only handheld laser visible from outer space." Maybe it's different here but I'd hardly call 85 miles "intergalactic."
Maybe they meant intragalactic. Although a 1mW laser pointer would also qualify.
I don't know, but it works for me.
It really is just a novelty. Less practical and more of a collection piece. You could use it to point at stars or signal others at a distance to your location (this apparently comes with a built in SOS flicker mode), but I'd be too afraid to point it at the sky for fear of messing up some satellite or fail to notice some small plane in the sky and blind the pilot and/or passengers.
To be honest, I'm not sure how I feel about this being readily available to anyone since they are extremely dangerous. They don't carry the same sort of instant concept of danger that say a gun would, and while they won't directly kill anyone, they could certainly destroy someones life very easily with their even innocent misuse. Not that I'm suggesting they be regulated like guns or anything. I definitely don't think children should be able to purchase them or even use them.
Yes! Let us amateurs attempt to damage a satellite that was specifically designed to provide fast high-resolution mapping and targeting, and was probably designed to withstand "enemy" sabotage attempts! What could possibly go wrong? :)
Succeeding?
Yeah, it's a really good idea to blind the search-and-rescue crew with your laser.
And blind it does. During daylight, your best bet is a signal mirror that catches the sun and presents a bright, but relatively harmless flickering light at the crew. At night, the lasers can blind crew (unlike cars, aircrew dim the lights - and that nightvision is destroyed pretty quickly by a bright light suddenly appearing - hence pointing lasers at aircraft is a really bad idea - even the crappy 5mW lasers can light up a cockpit and ruin the night vision). And that's without using NVGs.
Take it from someone who owns a 1500mw blue hand held laser. The only safe uses are pointing it out in to the night sky (After checking for planes) and using it alone in a room with goggles on. They aren't as instantly eye damaging as they are made out to be though, a lot of it is people playing up the danger to keep people safe. The side affect of them playing up the safety issues so much is people start to think of them as weapons, they are not. Not even close. Most people who play around with them without goggles though end up with slow vision degeneration, even if they screw around and get hit by reflections. Sure, a prolonged reflection will kill some rods and cones, but a momentary flash causes some degeneration. As far as being a weapon though, its about as effective as a long range flash bang, minus the bang, and with law suits following from the people who have dim spots, holes, or otherwise damaged vision. YES it is dangerous, no it is not a weapon that instantly takes someones sight. The most likely scenario is you cost them partial vision in one eye and get sued.
I consider these 'toys' much more dangerous then a machinegun. Why? Because while a nut with a machinegun can actually kill people, you cannot hide the fact that you are doing it. With a laser gun like this it is easy to blind people for life without anybody knowing who did it.
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
A 406MHz PLB is cheaper and more effective.
Usually I would agree with you about rampant fear-mongering, but not in this case.
Let's look at the numbers.
Have you ever glanced accidentally at the sun? Your eyeblink reflex protects you in about 100ms, and you probably see some colored spots for a few 10s of seconds afterwards. No big deal.
Now, this laser is marketed as "8000 times brighter than the sun". Let's pretend they're telling the truth. That means the light energy is equivalent to looking at the sun for 8000*100ms = more than 13 MINUTES before your eyelids close.
In reality it is even worse, because all of that energy is burning onto your retina in just 100ms.
But if you want to get a rough idea, just go outside, hold your eyelids open, and stare at the sun for 13 minutes. Let us know how that turns out.
Not everything is fearmongering.