Hi I Got a press release yesterday from Xtec cuz I follow uh, Xtec, um stuff and this thing popped up and it was rather bizarre unusual. I've never seen anything like this before so I thought I'd just mention it. it's um, a Well, here it is. Xtec adds safety to high voltage testing with the first ever laser nonon laser test probes go figure and uh, it says here the new LP 100 series laser probes Leverage existing laser voltage probe designs with voltage and timing waveform acquisition technology previously only available at the scale intended for flip chip integrated circuit analysis I Had no idea you could even measure voltage at a distance with a laser go figure and in addition to some marketing blah blah, they got in here.

There's one. it says one laser acquires waveforms from the electrical source while the other laser creates a reference to eliminate unwanted noise from the signal data that is acquired. And if you take a look at the photo here, it actually shows a red laser coming out. but it actually says in here that it's um, infrared.

so they've obviously got like a jewel. um laser just like those laser thermometer. uh things work the you got to have a red a visible red laser to actually show your target that you're actually um, targeting on. So the red laser does nothing but it would have another, presumably have another infrared laser in there.

separate D or something like that uh laser die to um to one for Uh measurement and one for actually aligning um to show what you're actually targeting. Because if you couldn't see it, then you'd just be pointing it in the air and you wouldn't. You know? if it's a couple of feet away, Five, six feet away, you wouldn't be able to know exactly what you're targeting anyway. Um, I Have no idea how this thing works at all.

Haven't got a clue. but thankfully the new Eev blog Apprentice Phil has a PHD in laser physics and he's tried to, uh, figure out exactly how it works and he may have cracked it. Maybe thumbs up? Let's go. Phil All right Phil You reckon you cracked it.

What's going on? They don't give us enough, give us a lot of detail. Phil's voice is a little bit better by the way. if getting better. Heard it last time he had an operation.

it's getting there. so they don't give us a lot of detail except that they're using two lasers to that noise reduction and that, but still doesn't explain how they do it. What I think they could be doing is possibly using the Faraday effect par rotation through an air space. So they have their laser which is a polarized laser traveling through an airspace.

It has some Dric strength and if you apply a high magnetic field to that, you get a rotation that polarization right? because I Spoke to Xtech and they said that it does have a maximum distance of course of a couple of feet, so you wouldn't you wouldn't get much right? Um, because the magnetic field strength would drop off very quickly, right? You'd only have a small interaction length so you wouldn't be able to get too far away from it y closer you can get would be better but right, there'd be an Optimum distance there because it's designed for high voltage. this only works at Xtech. told me it only gave him a quick email. They didn't know all the technical Det details but it only works at like hundreds of thousands of volts.

It's designed for high voltage. Swit Yeah! so You' need a really high voltage and You' still only get a small rotation in the polarization due to this Faraday effect y Um, so what they're probably doing there is they just shining their laser at their wire with the magnetic field. it could be a bus bar or it could be it could be. Yeah, high voltage stuff.

and the laser would get modulated but passing through the field and you get a small rotation in the polarization. So when it came back mhm you would have a polarization sensitive detector which would have some relations like this. So as you increase the rotation, your sensitivity decreases quite dramatically. So You' be able to get a an indication of how much field strength you've passed through yep and and then get your measurement from that and that's how they would get it for DC as well as as well as AC Yeah, y got it.

So you don't need a don't necessarily need a current on your wire, just electrostatic field will probably be enough. so it's similar to how the voltage detection sticks. You'd be very because they can work with no current flowing through right and you, That's what I think they could be doing right, but you'd have to have a look at the patent or something exactly. They've got some magic going on there I Have to do a search on the PS right? So it's something to do with Faraday rotation through the air.

So the angle of rotation is directly proportional to the Ver constant for A, which is the how how susceptible it is to be affected by a magnetic field right, magnetic field itself, and the distance that it travels in that field. So you'd have a maximum distance here. you'd be able to extract out your field strength and from there you'd be able to get voltage on The Wire Neat. It's quite quite nice, so it's plausible plausible.

Yeah, we don't have ad mythbuster style one where we actually chisel it out or something like that, but it is plausible. Yeah, All right. Cool. Well, I'm going have to they I'm going to have to, uh, get one.

They're going to have to send it to me. We'll do a tear down and some tests, but um, yeah. I'll have to find some real high voltage high energy stuff to work on, but sure that's not a problem. Thanks Phil Nice see your PhD did comeing useful.

You didn't waste all those years. Finally! Awesome! Catch you next time.