P3 operation question

[Draco]

I have a number of P3 drivers i am looking at and i have a question on there operation, when i adjust the bias and the gain all the way down i still get a very faint amount of light from the laser, it's well below threshold and does not even make enough light to act as an led but none the less it's still there, is this a normal condition ? other then this they seem to work as they should, and also they do this with the analog input connected to ground, both gain and bias all the way down. i have left the balance setting alone
I have not been successful in getting a schematic from the maker either

[buffo]

There is another pot on the board (the balance pot) that you can use to try to eliminate this "idle beam". It's normally only an issue with the newer blue and green diodes. The reds were so dim when they idled that you couldn't see the glow.

Note that the balance adjustment was not intended to correct this, but it's a kludge that works. Newer diode drivers have a suppression mode that eliminates that glow.

Adam

[Draco]

cool, thank you for the info, i was hesitant to adjust the balance controls, i have a modification in mind to to totally kill the output but since it's a normal condition i may not do anything but adjust the ballance

I was also testing the analog control via a 5 volt power supply and did a sweep from 0-5 volts, next i guess is to connect to a function generator, at the moment my ILDA device is still in "experimentation" phase

I showed a "non laser person" these controllers and got the remark that they where too small, thus useless and unable to do as advertised, i quickly corrected him he is used to seeing the drivers that have a buck/boost type of system and as such they usually are larger.

Thus far i like these little things