Laser Beam Profiler
A while back, my laboratory laptop had problems syncing with the campus network and the login password wasn’t working. I needed to use the laptop to operate my laser beam profiler (~$5500). So, I decided to build one with Raspberry Pi parts on hand, a Roadom 7 inch monitor and a Raspberry Pi HQ camera. A few hours later, I had my own profiler for about $100 if I exclude the Raspberry Pi. The basic profiler is shown above. I 3D-printed a monitor holder with a little basket so that I can carry everything together as seen below. As a note, the 7 inch monitor The Github files for the basic Python program and 3D prints can be found here.
Homework: Laser beam profiler
The Python code is very basic in terms of what it can do. Your mission, if you choose to accept it is to add some nice features to it, like finding the centroid, beam width, astigmatism, ellipticity etc..
Spectrometer Homework
I believe it should be straightforward to use this profiler camera as the backend of a low-cost spectrometer as well. One can simply insert the camera into the 3D printed spectrometer. I leave that up to you.
Precision Movement
I am in the process of creating some high-precision motion stages (100 nm resolution) that will be about 1/10th to 1/100th the cost of purchasing them from high-end manufacturers.
PiMICS.org 