- The EXTREMELY AGILE RELAY LASER, or "EARL" Beam Director
The EARL is a fully instrumented, easily customizable beam director / photoreceiver
system built around a set of precise yet powerful rotary stages and controlled by the
BAO Motion Control Solution. It has an easily accessible coude-feed from the fixed
input point at the base up to the larger, fully Az-El articulated output optical
breadboard plate. Much better than a serial-port driven microcontroller, the system
is driven using simple Matlab scripts with our extremely responsive driver C-Mex-dll.
Typically, EARL is outfitted with a 100mm Maksutov Cassegrain beam projector /
receiver, and "Pac-Mirror" or "Light Force" Fast Steering Mirror, in addition to the
Coude-feed optics. EARL can support up to 16" and larger diameter telescopes.
Optional on-board accelerometers can sense self-vibrations and compensate for
their optical effects using the FSM, while simultaneously performing video tracking
and mount control. A miniature industrial WinXP machine drives all functions of the
mount and FSM. Never fear--user-settable hardware limit switches prevent
accidental mechanical damage caused by typing an erroneous command. The easy
"Home_Position" command causes the mount to become straight and level before
and after use. Video tracking of objects is usually included and is easily performed in
another simple Matlab script. Complex tracking algorithms can be tested as well,
using the full power of Matlab, now nearly as fast as native C-code. Write your
institution's name on the wall using light with an included low power red (635nm) or
green laser (532nm). The system as shown is available for $98.2k with on-site
delivery. Contact us for customizations.
