Human vision is an amazing thing. The eyes are called the mirror of the soul and a powerful weapon that nature has endowed us with. What we really are not given is to see in the dark, unlike technical devices, called NVGs or night vision devices.
Until recently, we heard about them as special equipment for the military, who use them for covert surveillance and combat operations in the dark. The capabilities of such devices are also used in modern regular cameras. Moreover, some of them are able to distinguish objects in the infrared spectrum, while others are not. Today we will show you how to make a night vision device from a regular digital camera. So let's get started!
How it works and resources for homemade NVGs
Our NVD is based on digital camera, popularly nicknamed “soap box”. The electronic content is preserved, since it is capable of transmitting images in real time through the LCD screen. By changing the lens filtration and increasing the camera's sensitivity to the infrared range, as well as equipping the camera body with infrared illumination, we open up new possibilities digital camera, capable of detecting objects in the near-infrared range. Also, such a device can be used as a thermal imager, distinguishing heated objects, for example, an unattended iron, electric stove or kettle.Materials:
- Digital camera;
- Button – switch;
- AA AA battery 1.5 V – 2 pcs;
- Wiring, electrical tape.
- Soldering iron;
- Screwdriver with replaceable bits;
- Painting knife;
- Hot glue gun;
- Tweezers.
We manufacture a night vision device (NVD)
For this experiment, the author purchased a working digital camera Samsung S1030. This is a regular point-and-shoot camera with a sensitivity of 50 - 1600 ISO, a maximum resolution of 3648 x 2736, equipped with a 2.70-inch LCD screen on the rear panel.Removing the infrared filter
Unscrew all visible screws from the back cover of the camera. This is easy to do with a screwdriver, making sure that nothing interferes with its dismantling. This must be done as carefully as possible, without damaging the plastic closures and clips, and without pulling out the cables of the electronic filling.
We unlock the LCD screen by carefully removing it from the holder frame, which we then also dismantle. We release the cables from the LCD screen and camera control from the connectors. The output control board should release the front cover, which can now be unfastened from the device.
The wiring leading to the microphone must be removed, or this element must be disconnected completely. Having gained access to the high-voltage capacitor for the flash, it must be de-energized with a resistor, voltmeter, tester or light bulb by short-circuiting its contacts.
Having unsoldered the power contacts, remove the camera control board, leaving only the lens and matrix. It is to her that we need to get close.
We unscrew the matrix board with the light-sensitive sensor that captures the image. In this model, the infrared filter is a small removable glass covered with a polymer frame. Remove it carefully with tweezers, without damaging the surface of the sensor.
To maintain the camera's ability to autofocus, it is necessary to compensate for the lack of a filter with a transparent material of similar size. The author adapted it from protective film for your smartphone.
We mount the control board, front cover and LCD screen with a frame for it in the reverse order. Don't forget to connect the disconnected cables to the connectors. By connecting the control panel to back cover, check the functionality of the camera.
Installing LED lighting
We place LEDs and output contacts on the cooling radiator boards. We connect the voltage reduction module to the batteries and configure it to the necessary parameters.
We coat the LEDs with thermal conductive paste to transfer heat to the radiator panel, and then solder them to the contacts.
Our homemade night vision device can be considered ready. The range of such a device will directly depend on the photosensitivity of the camera sensor, as well as the power of the IR LEDs. Of course, it will be far from what real NVGs offer, but for short distances what you need.
The quality of ordinary photographs after removing the IR filter will not be correct, and the colors in the photo will be mixed and do not correspond to the actual ones. However, for true IR photography this option is the most suitable!
In this article I will tell you how to make simple night vision goggles. Of course, they will not be super powerful like real ones, but getting to the right place in the room in the dark will not be so difficult. All the necessary parts can be found at your home, you can order them from the Chinese, or you can just read this article for general development.
The design of the glasses contains an action camera; in fact, this is one of the main parts, so in the daytime they can be used as a first-person camera and shoot interesting videos.
You will also need an infrared flashlight with a light wave of 850 nm, since this is the light that the camera perceives best, but you can try replacing it with infrared LEDs with similar characteristics, if such suddenly become available. It’s convenient to use the flashlight because you don’t need to make a separate box for power supply and attaching it is much easier.
If you turn on the flashlight and look at the diode through the camera, you can see a lilac glow, this is infrared light. It is not visible to the human eye, but through a camera please!
But not all cameras alone perceive such radiation well, so the author used an action camera, since it coped with the task better than others, and besides, such a camera has many settings that will help improve the perception of radiation.
We will also need lenses for glasses virtual reality, which were purchased by the author on Aliexpress, they are needed to focus the eye on the camera screen, since the human eye is not able to focus on objects located directly in front of it at a minimum distance.
To fix the lens, you need to assemble a frame. Auto used dark for this purpose plastic bottle from the drink.
The lens fits exactly the diameter of the neck, all that remains is to fix it there.
To do this, you don’t need to glue anything, you just need to cut out the middle part of the cork from the same bottle using a blade or knife.
Then we place the lens in it and screw it onto the bottle. It seems that the lens was specially made according to the diameter of the neck, since the stopper easily twists and fixes it.
Now you need to cut off the top part of the bottle, while choosing a comfortable length at which the focus will be set correctly.
Next, you need to come up with a holder for the camera, to which the assembled optics will subsequently be attached. The author used foamed PVC plastic, which is used when assembling models. It needs to be cut into pieces according to the size of the chamber to make boxes and glue them together with super glue.
Then you need to attach the optics from a section of the bottle to this viewing window. To do this, mark the edges of the window with masking tape and cut off all excess without touching the tape. You will get two protrusions that should easily be inserted into the edges of the window, after which we glue everything with super glue to fix it.
After assembly, the camera fits very tightly into the resulting box and there is a possibility that it will not be possible to pull the camera back out, so the author decided to make slots for fingers and a record button. After a little modification, the camera can be removed from the box without any problems.
To protect glasses from chips, we glue the glasses with masking tape. Take a crown and drill a hole in the center evenly on both sides. The author recommends not drilling all the way, leaving thin plastic, then finishing the hole with a stationery knife, this will help avoid possible chips and cracks when drilling.
After the hole is made, the optic should be freely inserted there, but as you can see in the photo, the camera is pointed to the side and needs to be aligned.
Then I sanded all the edges and used super glue to glue everything in place.
To attach the lantern, plumbing clips of the required diameter were used, which were selected based on the size of the lantern.
The clips are attached to the side of the glasses using bolts and a nut. After which the lantern is easily fixed and securely held in place. The infrared flashlight can be replaced with a regular one and, as mentioned above, removed good videos first person.
For a more reliable fixation, the author recommends securing the 32nd tube with nylon ties, since the camera is heavy and the super glue mount may not be able to withstand it. To do this, using a drill and a screwdriver, we make three holes in the pipe and three in the glasses opposite each other, insert the ties into them and tighten them, now it’s definitely secure!
In this article you will learn how to make a real night vision device with a monitor with your own hands. This homemade device It has quite good characteristics and will definitely come in handy on the farm, well, almost everyone can assemble it!
To make the device you will need:
- 3D glasses with lenses
- Car monitor good quality with a small diagonal.
- Rechargeable batteries from a video camera, Samsung type 4 pcs. 3.5 V each.
- Two video cameras, one of which has very good sensitivity for night work
- Two IR illumination
You can watch the homemade video at the end of the article!
This is what the monitor we need for homemade looks like:
Two cameras, one for close-up viewing and the other for far-viewing.
The IR illuminator, purchased on Aliexpress, consists of a round board with a hole in the center and two rows of IR diodes. I left a link to them at the beginning of the article. By the way, you can purchase a backlight in a frame, and then disassemble it if you can’t find a suitable one. These boards will be attached to the glasses as shown in the photo below.
The monitor will be mounted into the glasses as follows:
Manufacturing of night vision devices NVD
We first check how the equipment works. I connect a small video camera to the monitor, supply 12 V - everything is fine. The monitor shows the image transmitted by the camera
I install the monitor from which the stand leg is removed into 3D glasses. I remove the partition, excess filling and lenses. I used a 3D printer to print an extension for the frame of the glasses to make it comfortable for my eyes to look at the monitor. The surface of the extension was not entirely smooth due to the printing speed of the printer, but this does not really matter.
I burned holes in the body of the glasses and secured the entire structure with plastic ties. For reliability, I fixed it with “Second” glue.
I carefully cut off the fastenings that were on the body of the glasses and transferred them to the lid so that it could open and not fall down. I also secured the hinges on the lid with zip ties. I also screwed in a small screw to give additional strength to the structure and the ability to unscrew it and get inside the device for repair or replacement of parts.
On the front side of the device I attach a small video camera between two LED lights. I fix the larger camera on top using mounts printed on a 3D printer, into which I screw small screws. Everything is held securely.
For the LED backlight, I also 3D printed mounts in such a shape that the side partitions would cover the camera and prevent it from being blinded by the LEDs.
Front camera and LED backlight mounted on glue. The wires from the LEDs are secured with ties and routed into the housing through a drilled hole. I installed control buttons on the body (on/off and switching to the far or near camera), and connected the wires to them. On the body I also placed a joystick, which is responsible for the settings of the distant camera.
As a power source, I used 4 batteries from Samsung video cameras, each 3.5 V.
The batteries are fixed with tape in single block, the wires from them converge in the connector. The connector indicates which wire is which, as well as the plus and minus. The battery is connected to the device using a homemade plug, in which the wires soldered in series are fixed with glue and tape. The plug is connected to the battery connector, the plug is connected to the night vision device.
There are still some problems with recharging batteries. First, the first battery in the block is charged for an hour, then rearranged charger and the next one is charged. We still need to think about this problem.
First short-range camera:
I tested the device at night. If the near camera does not produce a good quality image, then the far one does its job perfectly. Houses, passing vehicles, and people are clearly visible. And in the forest it will be perfectly possible to see a hare, a wolf, and our owl. Actually, I'm going to watch the owls.
Long range camera:
Similar
The modern world favors those survivalists who want to make things with their own hands. Could anyone in ancient times have thought about making a crossbow with their own hands? No! This was done by specially trained people who, in addition, kept the manufacturing secrets from outsiders.
Until recently, a night vision device was considered a special equipment and was inaccessible to the average citizen, but today even a teenager can assemble it from almost ready-made blocks.
So, let's start making a night vision device with our own hands.
The first thing you need is a monitoring screen. The easiest way is to take it ready-made from an old video camera.
Today it is not a problem to buy for little money an old video camera whose mechanism does not work or there is a problem with the video recording camera, but the viewfinder works.
Any viewfinder will do, color or black and white makes no difference, since any cameras in low light conditions only work in black and white mode.
Of course, a homemade night vision device is very remotely related to the art of survival. In the taiga, of course, it can help in night hunting, but I don’t think that when surviving you will be actively hunting, the main weapon of a survivalist for hunting is homemade traps and traps, they don’t take much time, they catch the prey themselves.
But, for urban survivalists who constantly carry NAZ, flashlights and survival knives with them, a homemade night vision device will come in handy.
Here, for example, is the explanation: we were stuck in the subway - we took out a night vision device and calmly walked out with it without stumbling in the dark. With it, you can walk along dark streets without attracting attention to the bright beam of light that a regular flashlight provides. Well, just for fun – isn’t it cool to have a homemade night vision device in your kit?
However, let's return to making a night vision device with our own hands.
In addition to the viewfinder, you will need a camera. The one that comes with the video camera is not suitable; you need one with night vision capabilities and operating at illumination of 0.01LUX or less. The camera can be purchased at a surveillance systems store or.
In fact, you need to connect two wires - video output and common from the camera with video input and common on the viewfinder.
Additional features can be IR illumination; for this it is enough to connect 4-6 infrared emitters, for example SFH4550. Emitters can be purchased at a radio store or at Chip and Dip. In Moscow, it makes sense to go to the Mitinsky radio market, prices there are 10 times less than in Chip and Deep.
The general connection diagram for the camera, viewfinder and IR illumination is as follows:
As you can see, nothing complicated and a minimum of soldering! Just make sure that the camera and viewfinder operate at the same voltage. Typically 5 or 12 Volts are used.
All that remains is to insert the homemade night vision device into the housing and connect the power.
Just as interesting.
Any body has the ability to emit or reflect IR (infrared) rays. The “NVD” (night vision device) developed in 1984 by the German company “Elektrisch Manufactur” is built on this principle. This device is based on the internal photoelectric effect. When projecting an IR image, the electrical conductivity of the irradiated areas of the photosemiconductor (2) (see Fig. 1) changes and a potential distribution is created on the adjacent electroluminescent layer (4) corresponding to the distribution of image brightness on the photoconductor (2). To carry out this process, you need to apply to the outermost transparent electrodes alternating voltage 250-500 Volts with a frequency of 400-3000 Hz and a current of no more than 10 mA
So, let's start making NVGs. The chemical elements necessary for the manufacture of the device can be obtained from any school chemistry laboratory or chemical laboratory of any enterprise. To begin with, let's take two glass plates, tin chloride SnClz, silver, zinc sulfide ZnS (crystalline) and copper. Keep the glasses in a mixture of H2SO4 and K2Cr2O7 (potassium dichromate) for 4 hours. Dry. Then take a porcelain cup, put SnCl2 in it and place it in a muffle (or electric) furnace. Fix the glass above it at a distance of 7-10cm. Cover the cup with a metal plate and turn on the oven. Once it warms up to 400-480 degrees, remove the metal plate. As soon as a thin conductive coating is formed, turn off the oven and leave the glass in it until it cools completely. Check the coverage with a tester.
Then coat one of these wafers with a photosemiconductor. To do this, prepare equal amounts of a 3% solution of thiocarbamide Na4 C(S)NH2 and a 6% solution of lead acetate. Pour both solutions into a glass container. Using tweezers, insert a glass plate into the solution and hold it vertically. But before that, apply varnish to the side free from the conductive coating. Putting on rubber gloves, pour concentrated alkali solution to the top into the vessel with the plates /carefully!!/ and stir very carefully with a glass rod without touching the plates. After 10 minutes, remove the plate (carefully) and wash it under running distilled water. Dry.
Turn on the oven and place the silver in a clean porcelain cup. Repeat the process described above at 900 degrees. The coating is applied to the photosemiconductor wafer. Get a mirror film. To make a phosphor, prepare pure ZnS crystals. If there are any impurities, the brightness of the glow drops sharply or disappears. Prepare the oven. Place pure copper in a porcelain cup. Crystals of copper and ZnS should be as small as possible. Maintain the proportion of ZnS - 100%, Cu (copper) - 10%. In the furnace, circulate copper vapor and pass it through the gaps between the crystals. The resulting crystals should not be ground under any circumstances. You should get a colorless powder. Mix tsapon varnish with crystals. Take the minimum amount of varnish possible. Pour the mixture onto the plate with a layer of silver and wait until it completely spreads and forms a smooth surface. Place a second sheet of conductive coating on top of the varnish and press lightly. After drying, seal the resulting NVD. Before all these operations, after applying the conductive coating, wires should be soldered as leads along the edges of the plates.
Now all you have to do is assemble the generator circuit high voltage and collect it all into a single body. It can be of any shape. But the one proposed by the developer is still recommended (see Fig. 2). The lens can be from any camera, preferably short-focus, for example from "FED", "Smena-M". Any biconvex lens can serve as an eyepiece. After final assembly, check all connections for correct connection and tightness. When you turn on the NVD, the transformer should beep quietly. If the image does not appear, do not despair. Change generator frequency or voltage level. Set sensitivity to maximum.
Resistor R2 changes the frequency of the generator.
The transformer is wound on any core and contains:
Winding I contains 2000 - 2500 turns, wires - 0.05 - 0.1 mm;
Winding II contains 60 turns;
Winding III - 26 turns, wires - 0.3 mm.
