Infrared LED?

[mhawk]

Anyone have any recommendations for a <50$ IR flashlight or strobe. It is to be used with a gen1+ Night vision device.

 

[CLHC]

I think Ken J. Good of Strategos International (Night-Ops) alluded to one on the way. As to when, will have to wait and see. But I don't believe it's going to be less than $50.00. . .

Hope you find what you're looking for and Enjoy!

 

[mhawk]

Thanks for the reply, I just noticed radioshack carries IR led's, they say that they are 5mm (high intensity), but since IR isnt measured in candles or lumens how much output would that be, and how hard would it be to build a led light?

 

[Everett]

i've been having fun with building my own homemade night vision for a while now, so i've had to buy quite a few IR LED's. DON'T buy the radioshack ones! i bought these at first. they cost like $1.79 and they are not the best. i bought some from digikey at 20 cents each and they are great! if you browse on digikey.com you can find whatever type of beam angle you want, and they will be fairly high-powered.

also, it is quite easy to make an IR flashlight because the LED's want something like 1.6 to 1.2 volts--perfect for powering from a single alkaline cell. for example, you might take a dorcy aaa, remove the components and led from the board, solder on a jumper to connect + battery to + led and put an IR LED on there. hell, put 3 of em. just be careful about locking out the tailcap when you're not using it because you won't know it's on and draining the battery.

 

[enLIGHTenment]

since IR isnt measured in candles or lumens how much output would that be

IR energy is generally measured in miliwatts overall output (like lumens for light) or miliwatts/cm^2 for beam intensity (like lux). You'd have to get the spec sheet for the LED to find out how much power it puts out.


Note: there are serious eye safety risks associated with high power infrared LEDs. What you can't see can still blind you.