Light up yard with infrared?

[monkk]

I have one of those cheapo black and white video cameras in my window, aimed at my driveway. The camera has infrared LED's on it, to provide illumination in the dark (the camera does see infrared), but I have those covered, because the camera is inside the window, and the LED's would create glare when the light bounces off the glass. Even if it were outside, the 6 little led's on the camera would not provide adequate light for what is needed.

After it gets dark, everything is black, except the occasional pair of headlights.
Is there an inexpensive way to illuminate the driveway/yard with enough infrared light to make everything visible on this admittedly low-end video camera?

Or might it be more feasible to invest in a more sensitive camera that is able to pick up the visible light from from the light over the garage?

I don't know how many lux the camera is. There are actually two of them, one was about $40 from Walmart, and one was a 5 dollar special deal from Fry's. (after mail-in rebate)

Thanks!

 

[CM]

i've collected a number of remotes over the years and have used the IR's in them for night vision gear. I've replaced the LED on a few of those solar yard lights with these IR (yeah I know, the voltage is not quite right for IR) and they have worked wonderfully. You don't really need a lot of IR since you don't need or have detail on the night vision so those cheap remote IR's work quite well

 

[LumenHound]

You could always get 2 or 3 dozen low cost IR leds and put together an array for outdoor use. 30 IR leds aimed at the same area might provide the IR floodlight your cam needs. If it works then you can decide on a better housing, mounting location, and permanent power supply

If it's still not adequate then your only out a small bit of money but had some fun along the way.

I've seen 30 5mm size IR leds sell on ebay for under $5 delivered.

Have you taken a close look at the camera lens to determine if there is an IR filter in it?

 

[HaulinLow]

I've been in exactly this situation with a cheap,CHEAP camera. I paid $50 for it about 5 years ago. Led s that I tried from remote controls didn't make a dent in covering the fifty feet of my front yard to the street. The best solution I found was an unfiltered infrared heat lamp designed for restaurant use. They usually filter these with red gels to keep the glare on stainless steel at close range to within human tolerance of eye pain:duck: . The clear one I found (I believe at Lowe's) was maybe 200 watts. I put it on a dimmer and in an outdoor fixture and "frontier engineered" a rain cover since there was little way that the super hot and thin glass could withstand cool sprinkles. The camera would see the light very well when dimmed quite low and I'd often just barely have it glowing to keep an eye on my little kingdom. I could crank it up when waiting for the pizza guy because they could easily miss my place.

A neighbor across the street confided that sometimes he would need to close his blinds when I was all lit up so I switched to a purple filtered lamp designed to keep large reptile cages warm and only allow a "moon glow" cool visible light level. It didn't work quite as well with the camera and a purple light in the front yard probably made the neighbors think that Prince had moved in, but that had to be better than the impression that they would have gotten from a blazing "red light district" in my front yard!!!

Disclaimer:
I am no electrician or expert on anything. This preceding story is an anecdote and not a recommendation to annoy your neighbors or throw together some unsafe jigsaw electrical behemoth that is capable of peeling the paint on your house.

 

[webley445]

Try getting some colored film, "gels" we called them. Used for the large par cans for stage lights.

I placed several colors, red, yellow, green, blue, etc in a mag lite and it works like an i.r. light. I used it for my night vision monocular, worked fine.

 

[Doug3581]

I say forget the LEDs, they won't put out enough flood light to work well. I have tried many things while playing with gen-1 NV scopes, and cheap leds just don't put out much light.

I have ordered the IR filter material from Edmund Scientific and I will tell you this--in daylight, it appears brown, but when light is shined through it, it looks deep red. You could look for similar cheap acrylic in craft shops, and try that in front of a regular light bulb.

Also what works for IR lighting is to run a regular light bulb at low power, to where the filament just glows red.
~

 

[LumenHound]

I say forget the LEDs, they won't put out enough flood light to work well. I have tried many things while playing with gen-1 NV scopes, and cheap leds just don't put out much light.~

This is likely because you used IR leds that outputed at 940 nanometres instead of around 880 nanometres.
Stay away from 940 nm IR leds for remote controls as they won't work. First gen NV devices are not very sensitive at wavelengths longer than 900 nm so you must use leds that output below 900 nm. 890 nm works best as it's invisable to the human eye but these are harder to find then the more common 880's and 870's.

 

[Meduza]

Try getting some colored film, "gels" we called them. Used for the large par cans for stage lights.

I placed several colors, red, yellow, green, blue, etc in a mag lite and it works like an i.r. light. I used it for my night vision monocular, worked fine.

Use a combination of 1 sheet Congo blue and 2 primary red, then you
got a quite good IR filter

 

[Doug3581]

....This is likely because you used IR leds that outputed at 940 nanometres instead of around 880 nanometres....

The two LEDs I tried were 830's and 940's. In the NV scope the 940 was visible itself, I could definitely see with the NV scope that it was working--but it really did not provide any useful light at all (for a gen-1).

The main problem with leds is that one alone doesn't put out that much light, and they need an optical setup to focus their light usefully or else their light will only go 7 feet or so. If you use a whole bunch of unfocused LEDs together, they don't cast any farther--they just put out a much smoother short-range light. In a typical flashlight (like a mag-lite) you only really have room to put one LED at the reflector's focus.

Also I remember I saw that if you test in a room with white (reflective) walls--the light appears to work much better because of the light reflecting around in the room, but if you test it outside in a area of grass/trees, it does much worse.

With the low-current incan bulb, people will be able to see the filament glowing but it will put out quite a bit of IR while still not providing anywhere near enough visible light to see by. Plus it's cheap to try too.
~

 

[TinderBox (UK)]

If your looking for an camera with infra-red have a look at this.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=46565&doy=3m4&criteria=SALE

regards.

 

[Me Too]

I've made a great IR light using a mini mag and picture negatives. Just take the dark ends of the unused negatives and cut them out the same size as the lens holder, then add as many as it takes to block the visible light an you have it.

You can also go to walmart and get a role of their widest film and tell them to just prosses it for you.

This makes the best homemade IR filter I've seen.

If you are using led's in your mini mag it wont work.

 

[Antrozousman]

I have a related problem to the OP and I'm hoping some of you will be able to help. I study cliff roosting bats in Oregon and I'm trying to find and/or build an infrared floodlight that I can use to illuminate as much of the cliff as possible to film with my sony nightshot video camera so I can study movement behavior of the bats. Last summer I used two headlamps with gel filters and an extra IR attachment on top of the camera which worked somewhat, but was limited in range and didn't have enough spread. I want to try and modify a large floodlight with a filter of some sort over the glass, but my main problem is how I can power it since I'm in the middle of nowhere. Anyone have any suggestions of floodlight housings, bulbs, and how I can modify a floodlight to run on 6 or 12v battery packs? Thanks for all your help.

 

[Doug3581]

...I study cliff roosting bats in Oregon and I'm trying to find and/or build an infrared floodlight that I can use to illuminate as much of the cliff as possible to film with my sony nightshot video camera so I can study movement behavior of the bats.....

Part of the problem is that there is no cheap way to make a lot of IR light without making visible light as well--and in this case, any large amount of visible light might cause the animals to act differently than normal.

My only suggestion is to go gen-2 or gen-3. They aren't cheap--but the US-tube NV scopes do definitely have "resale value", so if you only needed it for a set period of time, it's not as if you would be throwing the whole cost of the scope away.

The "mil-spec" scopes tend to cost more but they are intended to be used "as-is", as tactical sighting scopes. They are built rather rugged and often are waterproof, but you don't need that.
---For something that is more easily camera-adaptable, you could look at Stano Components: http://www.stano.night-vision.com/ (go to "night vision"/"pocketscopes/viewers")
---AB Night Vision also builds some less-expensive units that are more-intended for surveillance/camera use, rather than tactical use: http://www.abnightvision.com/
~

 

[Antrozousman]

Thanks for the reply Doug. I guess my main problem is that I need to use video tape because I want to be able to score the animals behavior when I get back to the lab. I have a night vision monocular (don't know the specs, its a hand me down from other people in the lab) as well so I guess I'm looking for an IR source to use for both the camera and the scope. I've been researching both spotlights (ie. http://www.nightvisionexperts.com/IRspot2MCP.html) and IR LED illuminators but I really need something that offers a lot of spread, more of a wash of IR light if you will. Does anyone have any experience with the night vision experts spotlight especially with the flood attachment? I don't really need to see a lot of detail, just presence/absence. I can tell the species by their size since they are the largest around. I'm hoping to keep my costs below $250 or so. Thanks.

 

[szki272]

pet stores will carry 60 or 80 watt infared heat lamps. they put out allmost no visable light (the filliment is all that can be seen) but the camera will realy pick up the light. The bulbs are pricy $25 or so. but they are 110 volt fit a standard bulb base.

 

[Hubbard]

http://www.unc.edu/~jjh/leds.html

I have these Led Arrays. I just hooked up 10 arrays to tape with a Sony Handycam. It will produce a pretty spread Infrared spotlight.

If anyones interested send me an email

 

[JamesHale]

Hi,

I've got a similar issue to Antrozousman, as I need to flood an area about 20m wida at 4om range with IR light and then to record bat behaviour with a sony night cam.

Does anyone have experience with the IR floodlights here?

http://www.nightvisionexperts.com/ultra-covert.html

Cheers

 

[EZO]

Hi,

I need to flood an area about 20m wida at 4om range with IR light and then to record bat behaviour with a sony night cam.

Cheers

This subject has been on my mind lately and I was considering starting a new thread about this topic because I was hesitant to add to such an old thread, so thanks for resurrecting it.

In my case, I run a surveillance system on my property that uses fairly high resolution (540 LPI) cameras that produce a color image during the day and switch over to Black & White IR at night. These cameras use arrays of individual 5mm LEDs (48 of them in most of my units) that are quite effective out to more than 30 meters. Most cameras on the market are made like this and the problem with them is that the IR is fairly directional and can produce what is known as the "flashlight effect" where you get a broad hot spot that fades as you go out to the edges of the image frame. I need to illuminate a wider area at greater distance and so my needs are similar to JamesHale's but for a different reason.

Although I have seen IR illuminators similar to the link provided by JamesHale, they are quite expensive and some of them can range from hundreds to even thousands of dollars.

I have been wondering why camera manufacturers are using what amounts to yesterday's LED technology rather than the newer high power emitters that we have all come to love in our flashlights and that I know are available in infra-red wavelengths from 850nm to 940nm. So, finally, I have begun to see some of these being offered for sale and they look very interesting. However, all of them are coming from China and virtually non of the mainstream surveillance system merchants are offering this technology as of yet and I've been looking into this for quite awhile. For the most part you find these on eBay and on Chinese web sites. The illuminators are claimed to have the ability to cover as much as a 90 degree spread compared with the usual 20 -30 degree coverage of many of the old generation of multi LED emitters.

So my basic question is: Does anyone have any experience with these new generation emitters or know anything about them?

JamesHale........You provided a link to some rather expensive equipment and so I am wondering what your purposes are here. I mean, if you are a professional who needs to observe and record bat behavior and you have the budget to purchase this level of equipment then you would probably get pretty good results from these high power professional arrays. On the other hand, one or more of these new emitters may suit your needs at a far lower cost. Personally, I am probably going to order one of these or one of these and see what results I get. I've never ordered from this outfit before but they also have a presence on eBay with a fairly good reputation. They seem to have an unusually wide selection of IR illumination devices, none of which are as costly as the ones you are considering.

Moderator: I hope my links here are OK, I couldn't think of a better way to show what I'm talking about, so I've simply tried to be discrete in how I've presented them with no reference to product names or model numbers and no mention of the name of the vendor I'm discussing.

 

[Sparkss]

Maybe I am over simplifying it, I am new to IR, but what about using one of the Osram IR LEDs in a P60 dropin ? for $70 yuo can have a fully funcntional IR torch. $20 for a cheap Solarforce host and $45 for the dropin + $5 or so for a primary cell (a little more if you want rechargables and again a bit more for a dual battery setup for longer runtimes and more output). these would be for the mobile use (bat caves) but not so much for the home security cameras. But I don't know about their throw. you would need to read and ask around (sorry).

Nailbender has these P60 dropins and I have seen a few people with them in their sigs on this forum, so you could always ask about their experiences with them.

OSRAM IR LEDS

Osram Golden Dragon IR $45 (850 & 940nm)-3.6v- 6 volts /1 level or 1 level 4-14 volts

Osram Ostar 21 watt IR (850nm & 940nm) 9-16 volts 1 level


There are also quite a few IR dropins on Batteryjunction and I believe dealextreme (but don't swear me to either one, I just know I saw several on more the one vendors site while looking for UV dropins).

 

[genki]

What kind of reduction in throw are we looking at if you put an infrared filter over another lightsource. for example, If I had a flahlight that had a throw of 75-100 yards (TK-10, Quark 123 Turbo, etc.) and put a filter made from the light gels discussed above, what type of throw would I expect to get from the resulting infrared light source? A few people discussed similar projects above and I'd love to hear some input.

Thanks in advance