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The Spectrometer Project
short description rev. 26.11.2018
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The heart of this instrument I’m building is Hamamatsu minispectrometer module, part number C12880MA. It is a module including grating + sensor + interface electronics, all hermetically packed inside a metal can with footprint only slighly larger than a regular 14-pin dil component. Light enters through a small slit covered by a glass window. What there is left for me to do are front side optics, frame & enclosure and logic & power supply electronics. And some software.
Some technical details of Hamamatsu C12880MA
– wavelenght range : 340…850 nm
– number of channels : 288
– angle of acceptance : ?
– measuring rate : > 1 kHz
The control and data acquisition is made via following connections:
– start pulse (ST)
– trigger signal for capturing the analog signal (TRG)
– clock (CLK)
– video (analog data)
– end of scan dignaling last analog pulse (EOS)
plus pins for power(+5V) and ground.
My idea was first to use an Arduino board for this project but the minimum adc rate needed (according to datasheet) is 200 kHz which is way too high for any Arduino. So I’ll use a selfmade PIC24 board instead.
The price of this module is roughly 180 euros. That is the most expensive part of the system.
Experimental Photonics 