Kenometer Pro Review

[lasersbee]

You'd be surprised how little profit margin there is on these meters.



Your new meter is still just a spray-painted TEC and it costs nearly as much as a Pro

And since you seem so high and mighty right now what ADC does the LB1 use? You seemed so willing to share what the LB2 uses...


Also, I'd like to apologize for the color coding on the comparison chart - and again I'd like to as if any information presented in said chart is inaccurate.

How's this?

You see MM... that chart is more fair than the Red/Green one you displayed on eBay...
I can live with that one... Now that wasn't so hard...

We are preparing our own chart as we speak....

BTW... the only reason that mccarrot is agreeing with you is because
he has a personal problem with me and Laser Pointers... I think he still
has one up his butt...

[EDIT]
The original Red/Green chart had somehow disappeared...


Jerry

[heroic]

Heh, I'd like to see lasersbee's meters going though an investigation like this

So would I, anyone wanna post pictures of the inside of one? Preferably large enough that I can identify chips.

[heroic]

We have tested it. It's accurate to within 5%. If I had the money to throw away on building a $1500 meter, I wouldn't be selling it for $400. The meter works that's all I can see. when I put a 100mw laser onto the sensor, the meter shows 100mw +/- 5% does the same thing with a 2 Watt laser. I'm not an electrical engineer. I'm a freaking hobby laserist trying to offer up a meter to hobby laserists that would like to know if the 100mw laser they bought is really putting out close to that.. Am I happy with the results thus far? Hell yes! Have we had problems? Hell yes! Have we addressed those problems? Hell yes!

I will always work to better my products within my limited resources.

My problem here is that you're stating 5mw resolution at 5 watts which is 0.1% tolerance when there is no way on earth your tolerance stackup is even close to that. There are at least two bits of error on that ADC and no temperature compensation on any of your resistors- which are not even precision resistors, mind you.

You need to use a precision ADC. They cost about $5 a pop. You need to use groundplanes on your PCBs at least as far as the input to the ADC. The ADC's analogue reference voltage needs to be sourced from a precision bandgap reference, cost about twenty cents. You need to terminate the line from the head into a low impedance sink and buffer it into the ADC. None of these things cost much and they would change your product from being a hollow promise into something that truly would be professional.

Heck, you'd even reduce your manufacturing time if you got some professional PCBs fabbed (cost about $10 a pop for FR4, two sides, with gold plate and two ounce copper) and did it properly instead of with all this interwiring. You could even keep using the little Arduino if you wanted. They're designed to mount to DIL footprints.

You were the one who wrote "Pro" on the box. Now you're saying it's an amateur product. Which is it? You were the one who quoted 5 mW resolution. Now you are quoting 5% accuracy. This is misleading.

I understand that you're trying to make and sell a thing, and that's great. But this is a quick hack, not a finished product. You should be very careful about your descriptions here, because folks are complaining.

[MarioMaster]

Well I've just done a little digging on the laserbee I and it doesn't use a separate ADC either....

just a PIC microcontroller and a microchip opamp to amplify the signal generated by the tec

[heroic]

Well I've just done a little digging on the laserbee I and it doesn't use a separate ADC either....

just a PIC microcontroller and a microchip opamp to amplify the signal generated by the tec

The Laserbee is also $200 cheaper and doesn't make claims of accuracy; it's also calibrated at full scale and does not rely on the monotonicity of the ADC.

Plus it has ground planes where your design has hot glue.

[MarioMaster]

I understand that you're trying to make and sell a thing, and that's great. But this is a quick hack, not a finished product. You should be very careful about your descriptions here, because folks are complaining.

One person is complaining and lasersbee is gonna be on the bandwagon until the cows come home.

The person did indeed receive a hack and not a finished product. He has chosen not to have the unit exchanged as promised by Kenom but instead took up lasersbee who was all too eager to trade him for it.

[heroic]

The person did indeed receive a hack and not a finished product.

I saw your photos of the "finished product" and it was a total hack.

Do you even have a fuse on the battery input? I hope you have product liability insurance.

[MarioMaster]

The Laserbee is also $200 cheaper and doesn't make claims of accuracy; it's also calibrated at full scale and does not rely on the monotonicity of the ADC.

Plus it has ground planes where your design has hot glue.

It also has exposed circuits where a carpet static zap could kill the microcontroller. The enclosed version is $300 The V2 version is $390 and still does not include a radial thermopile or any of the onscreen features of the pro - so it really isn't that huge of a difference in price.

The microcontroller has a resettable polyfuse. The laserbee has none.

[heroic]

It also has exposed circuits where a carpet static zap could kill the microcontroller. The enclosed version is $300 The V2 version is $390 and still does not include a radial thermopile or any of the onscreen features of the pro - so it really isn't that huge of a difference in price.

The microcontroller has a resettable polyfuse. The laserbee has none.

The Laserbee does not attach to a naked rechargeable battery pack, either; given that your "design" is entirely composed of point to point wiring friction fitted into headers, you really need to fuse the damned thing. One decent whack is going to have that thing shorting out and catching fire. Seriously.

As for the laserbee being exposed to static- do you have any MOVs or clamping diodes on your exposed thermopile input pins? Aaaah, thought not...

And I've confirmed that the Laserbee 1 and 2 both have materially lower noise and error figures than the crap you're calling a "pro" product.

Guys: you've got some nice software. But the hardware sucks ass. Redesign it ASAP. You can get PCBs made fast and cheap, with free-as-in-beer software at pad2pad.com so there's no excuse. You should also strongly consider getting a decent ADC because while I love the AVRs like a little brother, their ADC sucks.

[MarioMaster]

the LCD will break before those wires come off from an impact - i already stated the system has a resettable polyfuse. The final version does not have an external battery pack, it is part of the enclosure. The thermopile input is protected from static by the filtering circuit.