Please follow the following procedure:

(1)  Check that the bulb is well within its rated lifespan.  The published figures are guidelines only so although a 400 hour lamp will usually last 500 - 600 hours, if a bulb does fail at 300 hours it probably just needs replacing. 

(2)  Disconnect the power cable from between the lamphouse and the power supply.  Inspect the cable throughly at both ends and if any of the pins have become unseated then push them back and ensure that the cable is free from stress when replaced.

This does sound like a faulty power supply.  Please contact us to arrange to have it returned and checked out.  Please do not discard the "faulty" bulbs as they may well function correctly when the power supply has been repaired.  Brand new lamps are easier to strike so if the fault is marginal then it can appear to be an issue with the bulbs.

The OptoLED can produce arbitrary pulse durations when driven by an external frequency generator..  So can the OptoFlash, but it ALSO has an internal timing circuit that can produce pulses anywhere between 50 microseconds and 100 milliseconds.

What the OptoLED has, and the Optoflash has not, are

1.  Two channels rather than one (of course).

Yes, it's pretty straightforward.  The only thing to bear in mind is that since both the diameter and radiation solid angle of the LED chip will be greater than a 100 micron fibre can accept, there will inevitably be a fair amount of light loss.  However, a lot of light will still get through, and since the illuminated area at the other end of the fibre will be correspondingly smaller, the illuminated area is likely to be just as bright as you could get for direct illumination.  Although you could in principle attach the fibre directly to the LED, in practice it's likely to b

In order to efficiently couple to a high Numerical Aperture (NA) objective lens, as required for epi-fluorescence measurements, it is crucial that the light is well collimated as it enters the back aperture of the lens.  In order to achieve this with the appropriate magnification the light must come from a small point, historically an arc lamp which is a reasonable approxiamtion of a point source.  Intense LEDs with emitters of approximately 1mm square work very well for this application.

"White" LEDs typically comprise of a blue LED with a peak at approximately 445nm which is coated with a broadband phosphor centered in the green section of the spectrum.  Part of the blue emitted by the primary LED is absorbed and re-emitted at lower energy by the phosphor.  This combination of blue primary and green / red secondary emission appears white to the human eye.  Variants are sometimes described as cool white, neutral white or warm white reflecting respectively increased red output from the phosphor.  For fluoresecence applications both the primary a

The OptoLED can switch wavelengths in approximately 100 nanoseconds; effectively instantaneously in terms of biological measurements.  The Lite version has sub-millisecond performance which is sufficient for most applications. 

The OptoLED controls two LEDs independently, and it also give a very stable optical output thanks to its optical feedback option.  The LEDs can also be pulsed on and off extremely rapidly, with switching times on the order of 100 nanoseconds.  LED intensity is controllable either by varying a continuous current, or by varying the lengths of high-frequency current pulses, or some combination of the two.

The Cairn Optoscan Monochromator has both an entrance and an exit slit, each having an independently settable width. The exit slit width, defines the bandwidth ONLY ASSUMING that the light passed into the monochromator is a beam of zero size.  This has a maximum of 30 nm.

Up to 150W for the light source and 250W for the Optoscan monochromator system.

Our microscope couplings have individual X-Y centering and Z focussing control on all LED and light guide input ports.  For critical applications where it is vital that the light leaving the coupling is completely on-axis, or needs to be translated (e.g. a moving spot for photolysis) we can also add a tip / tilt control to the mirror cube. This is the same mechanism that we use for pixel alignment of two cameras in our TwinCam and can be fitted to any reflected port.

The mirror coatings in the OptoSplit II are optimized to transmit visible light and in 'bypass' mode (following removal of the dichroic cube), transmission efficiency remains as high as 96% - an impressive figure! In addition, we would also recommend high quality ET filter sets to maximize the level of light transmitted.

For the very best results we would recommend using a 1X microscope C Mount (with no optics) and introducing the magnification in the splitter itself.  We do however have many customers who get excellent results from magnifying and demagnifying C Mounts and also using standard C Mount camera lenses.

If the two channels of your OptoSplit are not parallel then it may be the case that you are adjusting the two channels using the wrong controls. When the 2 channels are superimposed you should only need to make adjustments using the split control and aperture controls. If you are using the V1 and V2 controls to split the image along the vertical axis it can result in the channels becoming misaligned. If this occurs you should refer to the manual to realign the OptoSplit.

This is a routine application for the Optosplit as the product has had provision for corrector lenses in one or other pathway since its inception.  This facility was originally provided for correction of any chromatic aberration in the preceding optics but rapidly found a further application for deliberately defocusing one or other imaging pathway in order to allow different depths to be in focus at the same time!  Obviously for z plane splitting a beam splitter is used rather than a dichroic. 

High-magnification systems, such as microscopes, can introduce chromatic aberration, which means that images separated on the basis of wavelength may not simultaneously be in focus.   To correct for these aberrations we have a selection of lenses that can be 'dropped' into either (or both) pathways to ensure that both channels are in focus on the camera chip.  We have also made provision for focus trim adjustments in the individual optical pathways.

Electron Multiplied (EM) cameras are valuable for low light applications, especially where signals are changing rapidly.  For example if a scientific cooled digital camera can deliver acceptable signal-to-noise images at 10 frames per second then an EM camera might be able to push this frame rate up to 100 frames per second.

1) Select the RS-232 Illumination from the list of available hardware

2a) In the RS-232 Illumination Setting dialog, set the # of Shutter Components to zero, the # of Filter Components to 1, and ensure the Line Terminator value is set to none.