Laser Monitoring – StellarPro Quick Start
- Turn on the computer. Open the StellarNet software by double clicking on the desktop icon StellarPro
to open the application.
- When you first open the software, you should see a screen similar to the one below:
- Shoot your laser into a entrance diffuser such as the CR1-UVN and couple to your spectrometer.
- To find a peak, use the mouse to left-click on the left or right arrow next to the Peak button to calculate AreaPSD, Centroid, Peakwave, FWHM, and Centroid of a peak. Note: The Peak button toggles between Peak and Pixel modes. In Peak mode, the software will find the peak of the spectrum, while in Pixel mode, it will provide the spectrum pixel value at a specific point. Make sure it is set to Peak when searching for the peak.
The left arrow will find a peak to the left of the vertical line in the spectra. The right arrow will find a peak to the right of the vertical line in the spectra.
- Set the integration time so that your spectrum is not saturated but as close to 65,000 counts as possible. Enter the desired time in the integration time input box, then click on the “Int Time (ms)” button next to the input textbox to apply the entered time. If you have a high power laser it is advised to use more entrance diffusers and a small detector exposure time and slowly remove diffusers and increase your detector exposure time. The goal is to maximize your signal in SCOPE mode. You want to adjust your integration time until the spectrum fills most of the SCOPE graph (65,000) without saturating. This is also the point at which you should adjust the number of scans to average (more scans averaged will increase accuracy, but will take more time for each reading). You can also add smoothing controls at this time in the Device Settings block. A pixel box car set to 3 and averaging set to 5 often gives nice results.
- In the first picture below, the spectrum is correctly optimized to be just below the saturation limit (65,536 counts).
- In the second picture below, the spectrum have a flat line on the top, indicating the need to reduce the integration time.
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Tags: Application, Software
