are 1mW green laser pointers worth bothering with?

[MrB (Simon)]

A stroll into any Jaycar electronics store will net you a 10mW green laser module.
They're behind the counter, ask for a ST3117.

[Starkler (Geoff)]

Hehe cool. It could fit inside the telrad, shining through a hole and run off the same batteries

[charlieaus]

Hi, Jay-Qu,
Could you tell me what Light Meter you used to rest your laser power output? I believe my laser power is a lot lower than claimed so I desperately look for a meter to find out the true output power. Thanks.

[Jay-qu]

I cant remember the exact model sorry, it was just one hanging around an optics lab at my university. I imagine even one used for photography could give you a good reading - just take note of the ambient reading before you point the laser at it.

[charlieaus]

Jay-Qu,
Thanks for the reply.
But how did you work out power output in mW?
Cheers.

[Jay-qu]

Oh, well I shone my laser of the photodiode of the detector and the screen tells me the incident power in mW - nice and easy

[charlieaus]

So, it must be a laser power / energy meter.

[Jay-qu]

Im pretty sure its a fairly average light meter. Light intensity can be measured in many ways, candels, lumens. But this light meter had the option to display the total energy per second (Watts) that was hitting the sensor. Other light intensity units may be some variant of energy per second per unit area. In which case the device would just divide by the area of photodiode detector.