cheap recording spectrometers?

[Joe Farina]

I found a couple possibilities for an inexpensive spectrometer, which will show an output graph for a light source, for visible wavelengths:

http://reefradiance.com/seneye-reef-par-meter.html

http://www.apogeeinstruments.com/content/SQ-420.pdf

These are made for aquarium or greenhouse lighting, and are sensors which hook up to a PC. I want to see the spectral output of certain LEDs. Does anyone know of better or cheaper options? I'm looking for something to connect to a PC, with a graphic display showing the spectrum.

[Wackhaus]

I ran into these guys at a meeting the other week http://www.chromation.com maybe email for price? I dont see any on their website

[Joe Farina]

Thank you Wackhaus, that is interesting. Looks like quite a new technology.

[Wackhaus]

... And im pretty sure i heard the words "ninety nine dollars" being thrown around but dont quote me on that

[lobaz]

I use ColorMunki Photo (http://xritephoto.com/colormunki-photo) for such tasks. I bought it together with a display by Eizo. It is definitely more expensive, but if you need to calibrate your display/camera/printer, you have a perfect solution. Then I use a toolset Argyll CMS (http://www.argyllcms.com/) that gives you low-level access to the measuring device. Among others, there is a simple tool that lets you measure single colour patch (or emissive source) and see e.g. spectral composition. I believe the resolution is 5 nm, but I am not sure.

Here is an example of measurement - I measured transmission of various filters used in anaglyph glasses.

anaglyf_bryle_spektra2.png (43 KiB) Viewed 4611 times

[Joe Farina]

Thank you Lobaz

[Joe Farina]

If anyone else is interested, I found this kit which sells for around $50. They have free software which plots the spectrum.

https://publiclab.org/wiki/desktop-spectrometry-kit-3-0

https://www.crowdsupply.com/public-lab/ ... etry-tools

[Colin Kaminski]

You might be lucky to have a solar astronomer near you with a spectrograph. You can make very fine measurements but the instrument is costly. If you have a nice diffraction grating handy you can make one and calibrate it on a sodium vapor lamp (street light).

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/get-invo ... ctroscopy/