Video monitors and CCD cameras.

What about a regular photography-type camera? Just look in the viewfinder. I have one camera that images light from a 1050 nm laser. It looks whitish-purple.

(Of course, that was rather a lot of light.)

But cheap USB webcams seem to usually work with Windows, the standard media viewer, no drivers or such required. Buy a half dozen for maybe $10 each, and try them.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com   

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
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Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

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Oh that's interesting. I need a really cheap camera, else it will have the 'standard' NIR filter and block out ~780-795 nm light I want to see. I'll try the one I have here.

Yeah I'll have to order a bunch, this looks like the simplist solution... It does put some onus on the user.

George H

.highlandtechnology.com=A0 jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

On a sunny day (Tue, 17 Apr 2012 09:03:27 -0700 (PDT)) it happened George Herold wrote in :

For monitor I have 2 of these:

One has a bit dark spot, but picture on both is very good, About 220mA @ 12V IIRC Cameras is a much longer story, I have used this with a small PAL color camera from to look at details of electronics cicuits. I dunno of these cameras ae any good for hat you want,' but the advantage of this over any webcams is that there is no delay (latency). I have expensive ethernet webcam too, and the delay is sometimes up to seconds (buffering), and small webcams like the Logitechs I have also delay to much for practical use with tools. The little Conrad PAL cameras with this monitor are great. Not sure you can still get them though, maybe I bought all the stock ;-)

I have bought some monochrome NTSC cameras sold on eBay for "security camera" use. I have no idea of the real sensitivity, but they were about $30. They work fine for my application of aligning parts on a pick and place machine. I put a couple white LEDs on it for illumination. I also don't know about IR filters on them, but they are sometimes used with IR LEDs for covert camera use, so I'll bet they DON'T have the filter.

Jon

Most cheap B&W CCD cameras don't have IR filters. In fact, the only B&W CCD TV cameras I've run into with IR filters are industrial grade Sony that you find in machine vision applications.

I wouldn't call them cheap, but cameras that use Sony CCDs with Super-HAAD are great for NIR. You can see a soldering iron through them. [This is due to the black body radiation, which has a tail into NIR. The peak IR is obviously too long in wavelength for a silicon CCD.]

As an aside, there is paint that the NIR cameras can see through, but looks black to the naked eye. It was developed for secret barcode applications, but I don't believe I ever saw it used in real life. It even exists in fabric, so you can have messages only seen by the cameras.

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That looks nice... now I just gotta dig up the source for 50 to 100

Thanks

amera

ency).

Oh delay would not work. I then need a low light level, zero delay web cam.. or some such spec.

I can still get these color CCD camera's from clover. Not as good as what I had, but perhaps good enough. George H.

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Thanks Jon, With Jan's LCD video display, I'll then just have to search for camera's. I really would like a supplier that can sell me

20/year for the rest of my life. (I know a pipe dream)

George H.

Many years ago we went searching for fabric to make a 'black' cloth to stop light from gettng into our optical pumping apparatus (again an Si photodiode) A co-worker and I were in the local fabric shop sticking our heads under everything. The first few plastic fabrics we picked were lousy at blocking NIR. Black Canvas works great!

How expensive are the camera's? We were paying ~$50. The cables always break at the connector though.

George H.

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Hi George,

We have bought board-level ccd cameras from supercircuits for around $20. The power supplies might be another $10. You can still get handheld LCD tv's that accept external inputs for around $50-75. You might need an RCA to BNC adapter, depending.

Frank

Here is the first hit on black paint transparent infrared:

Regarding your application, while not a genuine Sony HAAD, why not buy one of these and try it out.

I suspect if you call Supercircuits and tell them you need to see NIR, they would know which cameras are good enough. The Chinese vendors probably know which are good as NIR too.

The really low light NIR cameras aren't this cheap, but you are looking at a very strong source. You might get away with a pinhole camera.

I've bought a few cameras from Supercircuits over the years. Not the best, but pretty decent for the price. Watec makes better NIR stuff, but it isn't cheap.

Nearly every low light CCD I've purchased over the years developed a hot pixel. These guys really crank up the gain, so you see the defect in the sensor as they age. But a hot pixel shouldn't matter in your application.

If there existed a cheap R72 filter, that would probably make finding the spot really easy since the SNR would be improved. I've used Watec low light CCDs with R72 in front outdoors or by a quartz light and you would swear the glass is clear.

Small LCD monitors for car backup cameras:

I have one of these to check my mailbox from the house:

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You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

e D

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Supercircuits, check. Thanks Frank.

George H.

Thanks miso, Supercircuits looks like the vendor I've been seeking. Sometimes I've got plenty of light.. but in others I get a bit starved. Running right at threshold when aligning things. And then there's an experiment where the students can build an unequal arm Michelson interferometer to measure the wavlength. You've gotta find the fringes with the camera and that can be a bit of a challenge.

George

e D

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Those look great! Thanks Michael

Do you have the camera inside the mail box? Or is it a newspaper 'tube' with an open front?

George H.

It's in the house right now, but that window will soon be removed to install a new air conditioner. Then it will be mounted under an eve, with a clear shot at the mailbox. It saves me a painful walk to the road on days with no mail. I can see them open the door from the angle wher the camera is located.

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

Its amazing that a 4.3" LCD monitor costs less than $30 with case and power supply built in,

but buying a raw LCD module cost so much more.

Anyone have links to 4.3" or 5.6" modules at comparable prices.

Thanks

hamilton

Rural-style mailbox by the road? Make up an RF transmitter activated by a Cherry switch when the door opens. ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
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| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
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I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I have that, (with a tilt switch) but I get a lot of boxes that won't fit in the oversize mailbox. One day the mailman delivered over 120 pounds of books in the driveway. The camera lets me see them pull into the driveway and gives me more time to limp to the door to meet them. I am going to build a lockbox that they can leave large packages when I'm not home, or too sick to get out of bed.

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You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

No power supply. It runs on 9 to 12 volts. I run the camera and monitor on a surplus wall wart from a dead cordless phone.

It is not only cased, but it has an OSD menu to adjust it.

A lot of sizes show up on Ebay, and some offer a discount for bulk buys.

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.