Various sources of optical
communications-related materials and components:
What this page is
about:
This page lists, in no particular order, suppliers of items that
may (or may not) be useful to the optical experimenter.
This can include lenses, LEDs, photodiodes, photomultipliers, or
whatever else that I happen to put here.
Because things change, do not be surprised if items
appear/disappear from stock, companies change their URLs, or go
out of business.
Important Notes:
- The links below are not listed in any
particular order.
- I have not done business with all
of the listed suppliers. I have listed the businesses
below on good faith and, at the time of writing, have no
negative reports on any of them.
- The listing of the suppliers on this page are not
intended as overt endorsements and I have no
pecuniary interest in any of them. Having said this,
however, various comments have been added to some of the
listings: If you know facts to the contrary or can
provide updates, please do so using the link found at the
bottom of the page.
- Again, In some cases where I have dealt with the listed
company, I will mention this - but I can speak only of my
own satisfaction in dealing with the company in question.
- Remember: The lack of comments does not imply any
disapproval, but rather that I have not done business with
that company.
- Because some of the suppliers are surplus dealers, the
available stock may change and/or some of the items may be
used, refurbished, and/or surplus. As with the case
with any surplus outlet, items tend to appear and disappear,
depending on their popularity and availability.
- The suitability of the materials and/or components from
these sources cannot be guaranteed. It is up to YOU,
the costumer, to do your own research to
determine the suitability of the particular items that you
are ordering.
- Some of the items obtained from these suppliers (such as
large lenses, power supplies, lasers, etc.) may be
hazardous if used in an irresponsible
manner. It is up to
YOU to become
educated as to the safe manner in which these items are to
be handled and used.
Lenses (Fresnels,
individual lenses, lens assemblies, etc.):
Even though some of the companies
listed below deal mostly with electronic surplus, all of
them have - at one time or another - offered various lenses
amongst their stocked items: You may have to do a bit
of digging to find their offers of optics-related products.
- Edmund
Scientific's Scientifics - This is the company
that has the neato science and educational-related things,
including inexpensive lens assortments. Enter
"Fresnel" (or other important search terms) in their online
site search. (I have ordered from this
company and have been satisfied with their products and/or
service.)
- Anchor
Optics - This is a division of Edmund Optics
(above) and they have a good selection of both
"professional" and "experimental" grade optics such as those
used for "secondary" lenses on the optical transmitters -
including a reasonable variety of fairly inexpensive Fresnel
lenses in their "experimental" line. It has been
observed that, in some cases, they seem to have a mix of
different focal-length lenses under the same part number, so
you may want to clarify your needs with them at the time of
ordering! (I have ordered from this company and
have been satisfied with their products and/or service.)
- Surplus Shed
- This place has a large array of inexpensive lenses and
optical components of all sorts - some of it new, much of it
surplus. Using their "Lens Finder" it is possible to
determine the sorts of lenses that they have onhand and I
have used this tool to find the PCX and PMN lenses used as
"secondary" lenses in my optical transmitters. While
this company was the source of the Fresnel Lenses
used in several of my optical transceivers, they may or may not have
Fresnel lenses in stock! (I have
ordered from this company and have been satisfied with
their products and/or service.)
- 3dlens - This
company (based in Taiwan) specializes in supplying all sorts
of Fresnel lenses of different sizes and types. More
recently, their stock of larger Fresnel lenses has been a
bit low - check before ordering. They accept
PayPal. (I have ordered from this company and have
been satisfied with their products and/or service.)
- bhlens - This
company appears to be the manufacturer of many of the
inexpensive Fresnel lenses available nowadays and may
be the supplier of at least some of the products sold by 3dlens
(above.) Several years ago they seemed only to accept
direct payment but their web page now shows that they will
accept PayPal.
- Electronic
Goldmine - This surplus place has small
assortment of lenses and related items, sometimes including
some rather larger Fresnel lenses. Since they are a
surplus dealer, their stock varies. Use the
on-site search engine to find what you are looking
for. (I have ordered from this company and
have been satisfied with their products and/or service.)
- American Science and
Surplus - This company has a wild assortment of
science-related items - some of it surplus, some new.
They also have a limited variety of various lenses,
including some Fresnel lenses. This company was the
source of the "full page sheet magnifier" Fresnel lenses
(and of the very inexpensive acrylic DCX secondary lenses)
used in my cheap
optical enclosure. (I have ordered
from this company and have been satisfied with their
products and/or service.)
- Alltronics
- This surplus outlet often has a small assortment of
optics. (I have
ordered from this company and have been satisfied with
their products and/or service.)
- All
Electronics - Another surplus outlet that often
has a few lenses and high power LEDs and LED assemblies -
look in their "LED" section. (I have ordered from this company and have been
satisfied with their products and/or service.)
- Marlin P. Jones and
Associates - Yet another surplus outlet that
often has LEDs and optical things: Look under "LCD,
LED & Lamps -> LEDs". (I have ordered from this company and have been
satisfied with their products and/or service.)
- Laurel
Industries - Another specialty lens company that
can supply many types of lenses, including Fresnels.
- Fresnel Technologies
- A specialty supplier of Fresnel lenses. If you wish
to know a bit more about Fresnel lenses and how they work,
look at their brochure "Fresnel
Lenses" which is a valuable online
resource!
Optical-related
electronic components:
Many suppliers of electronic
components happen to stock many components (other than
lenses) that are useful to the optical experimenter.
There are also several surplus outlets that also have
suitable components as well. (The list below overlaps
with the one above.)
- Edmund
Industrial Optics - Long-time supplier of
quality optical components to Industry, researchers,
astronomy buffs, and hobbyists alike. Many types of
optical detectors - both solid state and vacuum-tube based
(like photomultipliers) are available.
- Mouser Electronics
- Amongst the vast variety of electronic components, Mouser
stocks a large variety of PIN Photodiodes such as the
BPW34. They also carry more-specialized photodiodes of
various sizes, including Avalanche Photodiodes (APDs) as
well as a variety of high-power LEDs, including some of the
Phlatlight varieties. (I have ordered from this company and have been
satisfied with their products and/or service.)
- Digi-Key Electronics
- Like Mouser, Digi-Key also has a wide variety of
electronic (including optical) components including some of
the Phlatlight varieties. (I have ordered from this company and have been
satisfied with their products and/or service.)
- Arrow Electronics
- Another supplier of wide varieties of electronic
components, and distributer of some of the Cree high-power
LED devices. It is unknown if small, hobbyist
quantities of the Cree devices are readily available from
this supplier. (I have ordered from this company and have been
satisfied with their products and/or service.)
- Electronic
Goldmine - This surplus place often has several
types of detectors, such as PIN photodiodes (like the
BPW33 or S1223-01) among a few others. At the
time of writing, they also have an LED-CdS cell "Optical
Coupler" (used as OC1 on the Linear Current
Modulator) which is P/N: G15396. Use
the on-site search engine to find what you are looking
for. (I have
ordered from this company and have been satisfied with
their products and/or service.)
- Lumileds -
This is a place to get the data sheets and design
information for the Philips Luxeon (and related) LEDs.
While it was possible to order Luxeon LEDs from this site in
the past (via Future Electronics) one is now directly linked
to the Future web site (see below) for those products that
have such links.
- LuxeonStar.com
- This is a supplier of a number of products in the Philips
Lumileds family of LEDs, most notably the Luxeon. In
addition to stocking LEDs - both in raw "emitter" and "star"
form factors (that is, without and with heat sinks) they
also offer pre-made mounting substrates (that is, the piece
on which you can mount your LEDs) for a number of devices -
including the Rebel line. They also have a number of
types of lenses for LEDs to concentrate/disperse light.
(I have ordered from this company and have been satisfied
with their products and/or service.)
- Future
Electronics - This is the supplier to which the
"Lumileds" site (above) linked: For the U.S. this is
the main supplier of the Philips Lumileds line. In the
past, I have been able to purchase small quantities of
Luxeon LEDs through the Lumileds site. (I have
ordered from this company and have been satisfied with
their products and/or service.)
- Note: Philips is apparently phasing
out the Luxeon I, III, and V lines in favor of the
lower-power Luxeon Rebel devices. Since I have not
used those other devices, the techniques described here
may not directly apply. For the time being, however,
the Luxeon III devices are still available from various
sources.
- A
direct link to the Philips Lumileds line may be found
here. Select the "Filter by - CUTT" tab
along the right side of the page to view those devices
that are available in single-unit quantities.
- Comment: As of 12/2009, I noted that
some of the pages on this web site tended to cause
difficulty with some web browsers, requiring occasional
"reloads" or even closing and re-launching of the
browser due to apparent problems with various Javascript
apps that are used.
- The LED Light
- This is another place that stocks high-power LEDs in all
sorts of varieties, from individual LED emitters to LED-Lens
assemblies to retrofits for flashlights. While this
place is often more expensive than ordering direct from
Lumileds/Future, they stock different items and may have
available product when Lumileds does not. This company
also sources some of the Cree high-power LED
devices, but color availability may be limited. (I
have ordered from this company and have been satisfied
with their products and/or service.)
- Avnet Electronics -
Another general-purpose supplier of electronics components,
including photodiodes and LEDs, including some of the
high-power Phlatlight varieties. (I have ordered
from this company and have been satisfied with their
products and/or service.)
- Spark Fun Electronics
- This place has all sorts of neat components and component
modules - including some high-power LEDs. (I have
ordered from this company and have been satisfied with
their products and/or service.)
- Adafruit Industries
- Catering to the hobbyist, this place also has a
number of LED and optical related components.
Important notes concerning PIN photodiodes:
- If you are using a PIN Photodiode for detection of VISIBLE
light, make certain that any photodiode that you get is in
a clear case. Many such devices are
intended for infrared only and are housed in a dark plastic
that will pass very little visible light.
- Also note that conventional silicon photodiodes operate
best in the RED and Near-Infrared spectrum
and that they do rather poorly in the green-blue spectrum.
Important notes concerning Luxeon LEDs - although some
of these points may apply with any LED that you
might use:
- Other pages on this site use the high-power Luxeon III
LED emitters. Please note that the Luxeon LEDs come in
a variety of different configurations:
- Color: Remember that the longest
wavelengths are most appropriate for atmospheric
transmission, as well as falling within the most sensitive
part of the response curve of silicon
photodetectors. For such applications, the RED
(627nm) Luxeons are the most appropriate.
- Beam pattern:
- For use with Fresnel and other types of lenses, you
will want to use Luxeons with the Lambertian
pattern - that is, light is emitted in a cone-shaped
pattern from the "top" of the LED. Note that even
with this beam pattern, additional optics are usually
required for best efficiency when used with lenses.
- For use with Parabolic reflectors, you may
find that the Side-Emitting pattern is more
appropriate for illumination of the reflector. As
the name implies, light is emitted from the sides of the
LED, rather than the top, possibly making it more useful
for the "deep" parabolic reflectors often found on small
searchlights and larger flashlights. It is
up to you to determine which pattern is best for
your optics.
- Package style:
- Luxeon Emitter: This is the "Raw" LED in
a package with leads on the side and a metal slug on the
backside for heatsinking. Applying full power to
an emitter before it is attached to a heatsink will
result in its immediate destruction. Prior to
powering up a device in this package, it must
be properly attached to a suitable heat sink using an
appropriate thermally-conductive epoxy. It has
been found that "JB-Weld" (an inexpensive, metal-filled
epoxy found at many hardware stores in the U.S.) does an
excellent job in terms of both adhesion and
thermal conductivity.
- Luxeon Star: This is a Luxeon Emitter
that has been attached to a small, aluminum
heatsink. Note that the heatsink that comes
attached to the LED WILL NOT dissipate
full power of the LED, so this heat sink must, in turn,
be attached to a larger heatsink.
The advantage of the Luxeon Star package is that one can
use screws and heat sink compound to attach the device
to a larger heat sink. Note, however, that under
the best of conditions, the Luxeon Star has 10-15%
higher thermal resistance than a Luxeon Emitter that is
properly mounted directly to the heatsink.
- Luxeon I versus Luxeon III:
- The Luxeon I is a lower-power device
(nominally 1 watt) that preceded the Luxeon III and is
capable of handling a continuous current of only about
350 milliamps. As you might expect, it is not
capable of the amount of optical output of the
higher-power Luxeon III.
- The Luxeon III is a newer device, capable of
handling at least 3 watts of power - with the Red,
Red-Orange, and Amber versions rated for a bit over 4
watts. It has a potential luminous output several
times that of the Luxeon I.
- There are other types of Luxeon devices as well.
At the time of writing, none of the other product lines
had devices that equaled the output of the Luxeon
III devices in the Red wavelengths.
- Luxeon Rebel versus Luxeon I and
Luxeon III:
- One of the lines of Luxeon products that replace the
older Luxeon I and III series are the Luxeon Rebel
devices. While these appear to have smaller dies
than the Luxeon I and III, their current density
(e.g. number of milliamps of rated current versus die
size) appear to be comparable. What this means is
that for point-to-point optical
communications (that is, where the objective is to use a
collimated beam to convey information) that the Rebel
series appears to be generally comparable to the Luxeon
I and III in terms of far-field flux. Because beam
divergence is proportional to the size of the emitter
for a given collimating lens, the divergence (beamwidth)
of a Rebel-based system will be lower than that of a
Luxeon I or III-based system - but the total brightness
perceived at the distant end will be about the
same. Since the Rebel has a smaller die, this also
means that less current will be required for that same
far-field flux. If you need is to flood an area
with light rather than collimate it, it will take
several Rebel devices to equal the same overall photonic
output of one Luxeon I or III.
Cree high-power LEDs:
- Cree Semiconductor
makes LEDs with output fluxes that are in the neighborhood
of those of the Luxeon III devices. I have not used
any of these devices (yet) so I am not thoroughly familiar
with their specifications. A few of Cree's devices are
available to the hobbyist from "The LED Light"
listed above.
Luminus "Phlatlight" high-power LEDs:
- Luminus Devices
makes a variety of very high-power, and
large-chip LEDs in a variety of colors used for
architectural lighting and image projection. In the
U.S., their products are available from Mouser Electronics,
Avnet and,
more recently, Digi-Key.
I (and others) have successfully used these devices
in the construction of very high-power LED-based optical
transmitters.
Additional comments:
- Because technology is always advancing, new products are
appearing all of the time, so this information may soon
become outdated. If it does - and you know about
newer products, please let me know.
- It has been reported that a number of the high-output
devices have been counterfeited, with inferior "knock-offs"
being marketed as brand-name devices: Often, these
devices may be identified by the presence of two LED chips
inside the device rather than just one high-power die.
Reports indicate that attempts to run these devices at
current levels appropriate for the "genuine article" will
result in very rapid degradation of optical output as the
inferior devices are destroyed by the excess power
dissipation. If you buy from other than a reputable
distributer (I have reasonable confidence that those
listed on this page are reputable - if you believe
otherwise, please let me know) then please make sure
that you do your homework to make sure that you get what you
are paying for! To my knowledge, these devices have
most-commonly appeared on the electronic parts retail
markets in Asia and New Zealand/Australia and not from
reputable suppliers in the U.S.
- If you buy LEDs over the internet - say, via Ebay - you
should very carefully scrutinize the
reputation of the seller to make sure that you are buying
what you think you are buying! If they have a poor
satisfaction rating, beware!
If you have questions or comments concerning the contents of
this page, if have information about other suppliers, feel
free to contact me using the information at this URL.
Keywords:
Lightbeam
communications,
light beam, lightbeam, laser beam, modulated light,
optical communications, through-the-air optical
communications, FSO communications, Free-Space
Optical communications, LED communications, laser
communications, LED, laser, light-emitting diode,
lens, fresnel, fresnel lens, photodiode,
photomultiplier, PMT, phototransistor, laser tube,
laser diode, high power LED, luxeon, cree,
phlatlight, lumileds, modulator, detector
This page and contents
copyright 2007-2013 by Clint Turner, KA7OEI. Last
update: 20140204