What’s So Special About the Centauri Meter?

What makes the Centauri meter excel and stand above competing laser power meters? By providing exceptional added value with a wealth of advanced features for those applications where other power meters are just not up to it.

Here is a rundown of just a few of those advanced and unique features which only the Centauri can provide for ALL of your laser power measurement needs:

Centauri is available in single and dual-channel versions

As its name implies, the dual channel Centauri supports two Ophir sensors, simultaneously independently measuring from two sources, and displayed as either a split or merged graphical display.

Naturally the measurements from the two channels may be logged onto one file, side by side.

Additionally, on each of the two channels there is an individual TTL output which can be used in conjunction with Pass/Fail limits to signal an outside controller (interlock) when either of the measured laser powers is out of acceptable limits.

Note: If you initially purchased a single channel Centauri, it can be easily field upgraded to dual channel via the later purchase of a Dual Channel Activation Code.

Advanced Measurement Modes

In addition to basic Power and Energy measurement modes provided by the Centauri meter, Centauri provides a choice of diverse and sophisticated measurement modes, depending on which type of sensor is used. These are listed in a table on our website, and are also shown below, including some unique measurement modes. Here is a rundown of all the available measurement modes with the Centauri:

– Power: Watts measured at a rate of 15Hz with Photodiode and Thermal sensors

– Energy: Joules single shot pulse measurement with Thermal sensors, continuous with Pyroelectric sensors

– Track – measures beam position and beam size while also measuring power with BeamTrack sensors.

– Exposure – measures the sum of the energy over time, with Pyroelectric and Photodiode sensors.

– Fast Power – Power in Watts measured and logged at a rate of 10kHz (on each channel with a dual channel Centauri). Used to measure laser modulation and flicker of LED light sources with Photodiode sensors.

– Low Freq Power – average power of each cycle in Watts, measured with Photodiode sensors and Integrating Spheres , at a rate synchronized to the laser frequency. Optimized for VCSELs and similar pulsed sources, where low pulse rate and high pulse peak power would otherwise cause problems if measuring in regular power mode.

– Pulsed Power – for high powers. Power in Watts is calculated from brief exposure (“pulse”) when the length of the pulse is known. Measured with small air-cooled Thermal sensors.

Multiple graphical display screens

Eight varied and sophisticated graphical display screens are available: Bargraph, Analog Needle, Line Graph, Pulse Chart, Pass/Fail, Position, Stability, and Real Time Statistics

Multilingual interfaces

The Centauri user interface can be set to one of 9 languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Japanese, Chinese and Korean

So if you’ve gotten this far, and feel you have all the information you can possibly get about our high end power/energy meter – read the Centauri Book, watched the Centauri Movie and still want to get a feel for its versatility and features, here’s a link to the Centauri Web simulator! Enjoy!