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Chapter 1
Introduction
Product Overview
The Ocean Optics Red Tide Spectrometer is a preconfigured, off-the-shelf spectrometer where all of the
optical bench options such as grating, and entrance slit size are already selected. The red Tide can be used
with various Ocean optics spectrometer accessories, light sources and sampling optics to create
application-specific systems for various absorbance, reflection and emission applications.
The Red Tide is low-cost and has a small footprint, making it ideal as a general purpose instrument for
budget-conscious teaching and research labs. It has a wavelength range of 350–1000 nm and uses a
detector with 650 active pixels; that’s 650 data points in one full spectrum, or one data point per
nanometer.
Data programmed into a memory chip on each Red Tide includes wavelength calibration coefficients,
linearity coefficients, and the serial number unique to each spectrometer. Our spectrometer operating
software simply reads these values from the spectrometer — a feature that enables hot swapping of
spectrometers among computers.
The Red Tide Spectrometer connects to a computer via the USB port. When connected through a USB 2.0
or 1.1, the spectrometer draws power from the host computer, eliminating the need for an external power
supply. The Red Tide also interfaces to Pasco’s Xplorer GLX, a unique combination of datalogger and lab
analysis tool that eliminates the need for a computer.
The Red Tide, like all USB devices, can be controlled by our SpectraSuite software, a completely
modular, Java-based spectroscopy software platform that operates on Windows, Macintosh and Linux
operating systems.
Ocean Optics Red Tide Fiber Optic Spectrometer
