night vision toy

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This is pretty neat. It's some sort of CCD or CMOS color imager. It's not as sensitive as a Gen1 tube, but it's pretty good. It seems to be very sensitive to near IR at 850 nm, and also to my UV flashlight, 395 nm. Gotta try some more wavelengths.

At its lowest illuminator setting, it lights up a room just fine. I'll have to wait til dark to see how it does at distance. Maybe I can peep some raccoons or skunks in the back yard.

Resolution is good, better than my Russian Gen1 imager. It takes still snaps and stores movies in the micro SD card that was included.

It won't webcam, which is a disappointment.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin
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How much better is it than your FLIR?

Reply to
John S

The FLIR works at thermal wavelengths, around 10 microns. This thing is visual and a bit more on both ends. This one doesn't see heat.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

Some night pics. It's in the city, not pitch dark, but the dark stuff was visually black.

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That shed is maybe 40 yards away. The illuminator was at its minimum setting.

I didn't see any critters last night.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

Impressive photos, John. So much so that I ordered the toy.

By the way, how close can it be focused?

Thanks.

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John S

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From a YouTube review it looks like a fancier version of this:

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I got one at a yard sale for US$5.00 to take apart. It takes *five* AA ce lls and has poorer focus than your unit but equal range. It's basically a c heapie digital camera wired to a small LCD screen with a big clunky movable plastic lens to focus its image into the "eyepiece".

It doesn't take snaps, record, or have a USB output, but I get to watch t he deer bed down in the Back Forty when they migrate through town.

It's the same as those DIY "night vision hacks" we've all seen using the sensor from a webcam and an eyepiece from a videocamera with a cheesy faux- military housing.

I can't decide whether to "upgrade" it to record etc. or sell it on EBay.

Mark L. Fergerson

Reply to
Alien8752

The box says 1m. In real life, about 8".

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

We use a B&W CCD camera (no IR filter!) and monitor to see ~800 nm laser light. Adding some IR led's as a light source I think I could do the same thing.

(I took some pics but there is not much light from the monitor... It didn't turn out to well.)

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The last is with the room dark.. the IR led has a lens and doesn't diverge much.

George H.

If

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George Herold

We tried the gadget at 850, 1310, and 1550 nm. All were fiber-coupled lasers at around 1 or 2 mW, no fiber, just spilling out of the connector into free space.

850 is brilliant, images blue-white.

1310 is dim but quite visible, images blue.

1550 is totally dead.

So we can use this to verify laser wavelengths. The 850s are slightly visible to the eye too, so that is the tiebreaker.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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