A low-cost web-camera-based multichannel fiber-optic spectrometer structure

This paper shows how a web camera can be used to realize a low-cost multichannel fiber-optic spectrometer suitable for educational purposes as well as for quality control purposes in small and medium enterprises. Our key idea is to arrange N input optical fibers in a line and use an external dispersive element to separate incoming optical beams into their associated spectral components in a two-dimensional (2-D) space. As a web camera comes with a plastic lens, each set of spectral components is imaged onto the 2-D image sensor of the web camera. For our demonstration, we build a 5-channel web-camera based fiber-optic optical spectrometer and simply calibrate it by using eight lightsources with known peak wavelengths. In this way, it functions as a 5-channel wavelength meter in a 380-700 nm wavelength range with a calculated wavelength resolution of 0.67 nm/pixel. Experimental results show that peak operating wavelengths of a light emitting diode (λp = 525 nm) and a laser pointer (λp = 655 nm) can be measured with a ±2.5 nm wavelength accuracy. Total cost of our 5-channel fiber-optic spectrometer is ~USD92.50.