Laser Power Calibration

These settings are used for analog input control to the laser.

laser

• laserMinMaxControlVolts should be the maximum and minimum analog input values that your laser will accept. Set to 5V max for the Obis.

• laserMinMax_mW is the maximum and minimum power your laser will produce. We will change these in the next section. Leave them alone for now.

• name is just for information purposes at the moment. Change it to the model name of your laser.

• maxValueInGUI is the maximum control value accessible in the GUI. You will be photoactivating in the range of about 1 to 10 mW but you might want more power for the scanner calibration stage. The default maximum power that can be set in the GUI is 30 mW but you can alter it by changing this setting.

Save the settings file and restart Zapit before carrying on.

Calibrating the laser

The Zapit GUI allows the user to specify power in mW at the sample. In order to achieve this, the laser must be calibrated using a power meter. A suitable power sensor and meter would be a ThorLabs S121C and PM100D. You can also buy the PM103A if you want a cheaper unit with the disadvantage that it requires a PC (this unit has an analog output, which you may need so do not buy the cheaper PM100USB).

These instructions are for the Obis laser, the output of which is linear as a function of the control signal. This means it is not necessary to obtain a calibration curve. There is no GUI for laser calibration at present, just follow these steps (Zapit should be running, of course):

• Turn on the laser and wait half an hour for it to warm up and settle.

• Place the power sensor where the sample will be and turn on the beam with the "Off/On" control located in the "Laser power (mW)" section of the GUI.
• Set your power meter to the wavelength of your laser and set the scale to the 100s of milliwatts so it does not change range automatically during the process. Point the beam at the sensor. Make sure you can obtain a reading.

• Set the laser to maximum power using the command line. For the Obis this is 5V so we issue at the CLI: >> hZP.setLaserPowerControlVoltage(5)

• Read off the value on the power meter. Let's say you read 41.1 mW.

• You can now tell Zapit what this maximum value is by entering at the command line: >> hZP.settings.laser.laserMinMax_mW=[0,41.1]; This updates the YAML settings file so you do not need to edit it.

• Test it by asking for a laser power in mW >> hZP.setLaserInMW(10) You will likely find it accurate to within about about 0.1 or 0.2 mW.

• If your lower power values in particular are off by more than about 0.2 mW, you can probably improve the things by adding a small offset to the low mW value. e.g. hZP.settings.laser.laserMinMax_mW(1)=0.04; Do that by trial and error and things should improve.

Please file an Issue if you have problems with this process or it does not work.

Checking power day to day

Put the power meter under the objective and set up as before. Set the power in the GUI or at the command line (e.g. hZP.setLaserInMW(10)) and confirm the reading with a power meter. If it is off, repeat the above steps.