Wondering if anyone has tried one of the “make your web camera into an infrared night vision camera” and what they thought of the results. This kind of thing:
I’m looking to record “wild game” in dim light, not total darkness, and really don’t want to spend the bucks required for an actual infrared camera.
I’m open to other suggestions, too, if any one has anything to suggest. There again, I’m a cheapsk8, and this is a relatively temporary thing, so, probably $50 tops?
Converting webcams is hit or miss. The issue is that some cams either coat or bond their IR filter on in a very hard-to-remove fashion. Others just have an easily-removed square of glass.
I did something similar with a sketchy “single use” digital camcorder that had some convoluted jailbreak sequence I could never work out. Level of detail with the IR filter removed and a dozen NIR LED’s was workable if your goal was something akin to the B&W security cameras of 20+ years ago pushing maybe 240 lines of resolution. Not sure if the CMOS sensors that seem to have taken over for CCD’s in a lot of digicams are as sensitive to IR.
An easy check is to take a remote control, point at lens and push button. You’ll probably see the light, good way to check if remote is working. If you remote the IR filter even more receptive.
Just try it with your phone. Did mine and while I can’t see the IR light on the remote, clear on phone screen. Anything longer than 720~750nm is outside of most human sight.
Ah yes … an oft-recommended method when I was researching that project years ago.
Worth mentioning that such projects generally need an IR/NIR source to be useful in actual darkness - which is why most color surveillance IP cameras feature a cluster of them around the lens.
I did this to a Logitech C160 when I was messing around with FreeTrack http://www.free-track.net/english/ head tracker. While I had success
Zootboy is correct, it is very hit or miss. As for having to use it in the
dark, you can actually place a piece of exposed film (or a piece of floppy
disk) over the lens. This will block all but the infrared. I did have to
tweak the gain, brightness and contrast settings on the web cam utility to
get acceptable results.
I’m not using the webcam anymore so if you want I can drop it by the space.
I appreciate the offer, and when things settle for me a bit, I may hit you up on that. Right now I don’t know when I’d make it by to take advantage. I’ll dredge this back up when I have a moment, though.
Thank you again!
@Joseph_Helmstetter When you did the conversion, it pretty much make the camera useless for daylight, right? I can’t see how it’d be any other way, but the articles never really mention that. I figure there’s a reason they put the IR filters in to start…
Does anyone know off hand how the “infrared night vision” camcorders, where they do “IF nightvision” as well as daylight shots at the press of a button, do that? Could be a filter, I suppose, or just an electronic process change…
@Jast: Here’s a site that converts cameras for both IR & UV. It shows photos before and after: No filters and with cut-off filters. Also has a primer on conversions