Active IR Vision System

[rcole13825]

Hi all and thank you for reading this post as I am new and just found this outstanding Forum.

I am in Law Enforcement for a Small Texas County that can't afford to put a 10K+ Thermal Imager into my Patrol Unit. I would like to build a Active IR Camera System that I can see out to 200 meters the longer the better.

I bought a long range night vision security camera. http://www.active-vision.com/High_Resolution_IR_Zoom_CCTV_Camera_p/acc-e04n-hvd.htm My original concept was to place the unit on the dash of my patrol unit and rotate it on a tripod head so that I could drive blacked out in urban housing areas to spot car burglars and kids hiding out in the streets at night etc.

Will the LED's reflected off the Patrol Units windshield and made it unable to focus the video camera. The camera has a auto switch between normal color and IR and when you point it at a light area it switches to normal color and you are unable to see beyond that light area. Outside of the Patrol Unit it works nicely however I have to hold it on my drivers side mirror and it makes it difficult to do much else. I looked into tilt and pan systems for the camera and many are way to pricey and most are too slow to enable me to switch sides of the street etc.

I looked into this unit a golight http://www.golight.com/products/pdfs/golight_2049_ig.pdf that has a nice pan speed and the system is around $350.00

I am thinking that I might be able to build a IR LED Illiminator and night vision video camera into the golight replacing the incandescent lighting fixture.

I was able to find this LED High Power Illuminator http://www.tech-led.com/data/L850-66-60-130.pdf

Anyone hear have any experience with these LED's or knowledge enough to know if my idea is plausible?

Thanks for any assistance.

Ron.

 

[Benson]

You mention the glare from the IR LEDs on the windshield is the current problem, so what about leaving the camera mounted on the dash, and using an external IR illuminator? That'd probably be the cheapest way to make things happen, but unless your IR illuminator is very floody, it would mean you'd have to aim two things in sync.

The golight conversion sounds workable; you could use a resistor (something like 6.5 Ohm), or a constant-current driver. Since the beam of the IR module you linked is 13 degree half-width, and the camera you're using now ranges from 28 to 4 degrees, the lower half (or so) of your magnification range would have substantially under-illuminated areas at the edges of your field-of-view -- if you need those wide angles to work, you could use two or more of those, spread to cover the whole area, or maybe add a lens to that one. But the concept sounds fine.

 

[ZDP189]

Just be careful. It may be illegal to drive without lights at night. Obviously you won't be pulled over by another cop, but you may find yourself defending a civil action or a disciplinary hearing if you are involved in an accident.