idleprocess
Flashaholic
First and foremost, this project was conceived by CPF member Everett. This project earned an entry on hackaday on February 23rd - which is how I stumbled across it. Thanks for doing all the footwork, everett!
The meat of the project - transform a $30 "single-use" digital camcorder into a night vision device.
This project appealed to me for a number of reasons. First, it's very cheap - the camcorder is the most expensive component. Second, it repurposes something mundane into something far more interesting. Third, it greatly expands the "brochure" capabilities of a durable device that its maker would have us treat as "disposable" so they can turn around and rent it back to you at an exorbitant rate. There's nothing like turning crippleware on its head.
Anyway... you didn't come here to read my indictment of consumer culture or the marketing hacks that stoke it.
This is not a how-to. Everett has done a good job of explaining how to do things without beating the subject to death. If you want to know how to "hack" the firmware and add a USB port, I found this site to be instructive.
"Phase 1" photographs
Packging - front (know your target)
Packging - rear (In case you want to read the ad copy? Note that processing is not included in the $30 retail price)
In action before dissection
Dissection in-progress
Primary guts
Lens, after IR Filter removal. Regrettably, the IR filter did not survive the process. There goes the last possibillity of returning it
In action, sans IR filter. Note the blue spot around the monitor controls - that's what reflected IR looks like. IR illumination is courtesy 940nm LEDs on a constant-current LED tester - 4x10mA, 1x30mA.
I regret that I was unable to take some "before" and "after" shots of an IR LED, but that would require more than 2 hands . With the filter, the camcorder saw the emitted IR like most other digigams. Without the filter, the emitted light blooms to the point of washing out most of the image at just 10mA.
I may not need all 20 of the LEDs I bought. Doing some testing in my small bathroom with my 4x10mA + 1x30mA setup, I had not trouble making out objects at the maximum 10' range the bathroom offers.
I'm not exactly sure how this project is going to proceed. I might go the headlamp route; if so, I'll probably mount it for left-eye use to reduce parallax error. I think I'm going to leave the housing as-is.
The meat of the project - transform a $30 "single-use" digital camcorder into a night vision device.
This project appealed to me for a number of reasons. First, it's very cheap - the camcorder is the most expensive component. Second, it repurposes something mundane into something far more interesting. Third, it greatly expands the "brochure" capabilities of a durable device that its maker would have us treat as "disposable" so they can turn around and rent it back to you at an exorbitant rate. There's nothing like turning crippleware on its head.
Anyway... you didn't come here to read my indictment of consumer culture or the marketing hacks that stoke it.
This is not a how-to. Everett has done a good job of explaining how to do things without beating the subject to death. If you want to know how to "hack" the firmware and add a USB port, I found this site to be instructive.
"Phase 1" photographs
Packging - front (know your target)
Packging - rear (In case you want to read the ad copy? Note that processing is not included in the $30 retail price)
In action before dissection
Dissection in-progress
Primary guts
Lens, after IR Filter removal. Regrettably, the IR filter did not survive the process. There goes the last possibillity of returning it
In action, sans IR filter. Note the blue spot around the monitor controls - that's what reflected IR looks like. IR illumination is courtesy 940nm LEDs on a constant-current LED tester - 4x10mA, 1x30mA.
I regret that I was unable to take some "before" and "after" shots of an IR LED, but that would require more than 2 hands . With the filter, the camcorder saw the emitted IR like most other digigams. Without the filter, the emitted light blooms to the point of washing out most of the image at just 10mA.
I may not need all 20 of the LEDs I bought. Doing some testing in my small bathroom with my 4x10mA + 1x30mA setup, I had not trouble making out objects at the maximum 10' range the bathroom offers.
I'm not exactly sure how this project is going to proceed. I might go the headlamp route; if so, I'll probably mount it for left-eye use to reduce parallax error. I think I'm going to leave the housing as-is.
Last edited: