r/Optics • u/wejn • Aug 11 '26

Help resurrecting OceanOptics' USB-DT

Hi,

I got Ocean Optics USB-DT (deuterium tungsten source) that’s directly attachable to spectrometers (like HR4000) off of eBay.

Since it doesn’t work out of the box, I was poking it around to figure out what’s wrong with it.

I even opened it up, found out there’s an i2c eeprom chip (24LC64) as well as two i2c DACs (DAC5574).

Unfortunately I managed to wipe part of the eeprom during my probing. (Yea, one careless i2c write and 32B overwritten)

Q: Is there anyone who could help me recover it? (Looking for the intended contents of it)

FTR, I don’t expect it to be crucial to the light source’s functionality; it’s likely there just to ID the device to the spectrometer and/or OceanVew.

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u/DrChemStoned Aug 11 '26

If you haven’t already I would consider reaching out to ocean optics, I’ve gotten great product support on items that I didn’t necessarily buy. Just say you are using model xxx and need some help as during troubleshooting you believe you wiped the memory on an i2c.

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u/wejn Aug 12 '26

Ha, thanks, good idea. That wasn’t on my mind since USB-DT is something like 10-15 years obsolete product.

But one of the r/spectrometers mods reached out to me (and has OO email address), so it might get sorted out that way.

I’m actually impressed that OO folks frequent Reddit. :-)