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Does anyone know how self levelling 'laser levels' work?
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e100:
That's the kind you get from a hardware store that projects a horizontal or vertical beam used for aligning things when building rooms in a house etc.

https://youtu.be/xiGTMJGB7vQ?t=7

I watched a bunch of teardown videos but it wasn't entirely obvious if they are purely mechanical pendulums with some kind of damping, or if they are accelerometer based like those fancy gimbal stabilizers used for holding mobile phones as cameras.

They seem quite small for a purely mechanical mechanical system. I kind of imagined something bigger like you would find in a pendulum clock.
ace1903:
I have two older units, probably something 2000s. One of them is with two separate spirit levels and the other one is with one spirit level with bobble that goes in x-y plane.
On spirit level there is IR sender with two receiver diodes to find it when it is leveled. Maybe newer units have accelerometers but I think that old technology is dirt cheap and intrinsic no drift proved ;)
I also would like to see what is in newer units and in receivers units that make leveling easier.
Attaching pictures of the second unit.
e100:
Interesting, I did a search for "electronic bubble level" and "LED bubble level" but it didn't turn up any pictures that looked like a combination of old and new technologies.
RoGeorge:
The ones I know are all based on mechanical pendulums, and from there with all kind of variations.

Some have a rotating laser (or mirror) to "browse" a pointy cylindrical LASER beam, some others have a diffraction grate instead of a rotating spot, which makes a "static" flatten, surface-like, LASER beam.

No matter how they prepare the LASER plane, by rotation or by diffraction, these reference LASER planes are aligned by mechanical pendulums, and inside they have mechanical calibration screws for calibrating the tilt of the laser planes.  They also have some mechanical locking mechanism, to block the pendulum when not in use, so to avoid damage during handling and transportation of the instrument.

tautech:

--- Quote from: RoGeorge on February 28, 2022, 01:42:27 pm ---The ones I know are all based on mechanical pendulums, and from there with all kind of variations.

Some have a rotating laser (or mirror) to "browse" a pointy cylindrical LASER beam, some others have a diffraction grate instead of a rotating spot, which makes a "static" flatten, surface-like, LASER beam.

No matter how they prepare the LASER plane, by rotation or by diffraction, these reference LASER planes are aligned by mechanical pendulums, and inside they have mechanical calibration screws for calibrating the tilt of the laser planes.  They also have some mechanical locking mechanism, to block the pendulum when not in use, so to avoid damage during handling and transportation of the instrument.

--- End quote ---
Not so much.
The leveling pendulums have very limited travel and initial leveling adjustments typically with a bullseye bubble place the assembly within a range that the autoleveling pendulums can do their thing. But yes within reason they are a precision mechanism and need be handled with some but not extreme care.
Those I've adjusted just had 2 setscrews at 90o so to adjust the laser axis to level planes once the auto-leveling had done its thing.
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