Cobolt

The Cobolt laser controller controls compact solid-state lasers.

This driver had a major rewrite on April 10, 2020.

Max Power is still in the code to be backwards compatible with the old Cobolt driver, but it is deprecated and not used.

The serial port

• 115,200 or 19200 baud,
• no flow control,
• one stop bit
• no parity
• 8 data bits
• delaybetweenChars 0 ms.

The new driver supports automatic serial port detection.

Notes

Lasers will ignore the power setting for a few minutes while they start up. Re-set power/current after warm up is over

If the Laser has ‘'’aborted’’’, you could issue a ‘'’restart’’’ command via the Serial Command property, followed by a key cycle to restart the laser.

Device Properties

The new driver supports constant current, constant power, and modulation modes. Also, you can select Analog or Digital modulation. The ability to enable/disable Autostart is now supported. There is also direct serial communication supported via Serial Command

Linux udev Rule

As Root, create a file named /etc/udev/rules.d/99-Cobolt.rules with the following context:

# allow users to claim the device
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{product}=="Cobolt Laser Driver MLD",  ATTRS{idVendor}=="25dc", MODE="0660", GROUP="users", SYMLINK+="ACM%n"

Click here to search for Cobolt on the Micro-Manager mailing list archive.

Karl Bellvé, Biomedical Imaging Group, University of Massachusetts 10:36, 10 April 2020 (PDT)

A useful device for control of additional laser shutter can be an Arduino board; a way to integrate hardware and software may be build a GUI panel to control easily laser power and shutter devices:

• Control laser shutter with Arduino by Rocco D’Antuono
• GUI panel for Cobolt laser control by Rocco D’Antuono