Homemade pnv. Do-it-yourself night vision device - is it possible? How to make a night vision device yourself

Today we will skip the medieval alchemical method that allows you to make a night vision device with your own hands. You can easily manage if sulfuric acid and tin chloride are stored at home, but the authors consider such an approach dangerous and unreasonable. Work plan today: we briefly discuss the principle of operation of a night vision device. We will help to collect, if we can’t sit still, perhaps we will make a brief digression regarding stores: we will discuss stale items from the field of hunting equipment.

The principle of operation of the night vision device

The eye is a passive radar that receives radiation emitted by objects. The visible spectrum is a small range of fluctuations of the body of the Universe surrounding humanity. The predator from the film of the same name switched ranges, the representative of an advanced civilization is unable to cover the total spectrum! In the dark, the eye is powerless to see; it is inaccessible to Homo Sapiens to observe infrared radiation. Bodies will emit waves at low ambient temperatures, the power density drops. The first night vision device looms. Nothing to do with the military. The device is used by builders.

Meet the thermal imager, which receives infrared radiation from objects. The device is not intended for viewing a dark landscape, but a frontal view can be seen. The contraption has a number of settings, the following features are typical:

• a temperature of 10 degrees Celsius heat looks like an orange glow;
• the walls of the houses look reddish;
• the surrounding inanimate nature of different shades up to black.

Forget to assemble a thermal imager with your own hands, you can buy thousands for 50. Having spent seven thousand, you will purchase a night vision device (NVD) in the store. It makes no sense to take a special thermal imager for the purpose of vigilance in the dark, it helps builders evaluate the quality of thermal insulation measures. If there is a familiar foreman, you can admire nature in the dark for free by borrowing the unit.

The scheme of the night vision device is implemented by the indicated processes, so as not to irritate the eye with a radiant rainbow, inside the factory product there is a transparent plate covered with semiconductor material, using the internal photoelectric effect, it allows you to "see" the infrared radiation of objects.

For reference. The photoelectric effect is the phenomenon of the transition of material electrons to new energy levels under the action of photons of light. It is incorrect to use the term for invisible radiation, so the concept is played up by literature, therefore we avoid contradicting other (authoritative) sources.

Under the action of invisible "photons" the electrons of the plate receive energy. Information can be read by changing the transparency of the material, the electrical conductivity of the substance. The microchannel technology of manufacturing sensitive elements helps to avoid illumination of neighboring pixels. The Nazis were the first to approach the solution of the problem. Germany enjoyed the labor of talented scientists. Some voluntarily, others forced. Created a rifle sight weighing 2.25 kg with a suitcase of batteries (13.5) kg. It would probably have made it possible to accomplish many feats (or crimes) if the Soviet troops had not taken Berlin in May 1945.

Sometimes the radiation is additionally amplified by photomultipliers. Helps to get a bright contrast image for a night vision device. Often, external radiation is not enough, infrared illumination is used. Lamps are used, semiconductor diodes of a special type are more often used. You can find it in a radio amateur store. By the way, the coherence of LED radiation is high. This means that interference will not affect the quality of the picture.

For reference. Coherence goes back by interpretation to the in-phaseness of the wave. Such light is concentrated by a narrow segment of the spectrum (vertical line of the graph), easily added, giving greater brightness than other sources of radiation. As a result, you will get high-quality illumination with low power.

Night vision devices are classified as follows:

1. The nature of the impact on the environment:
   1. Active with LED backlight.
   2. Passive, accepting only radiation from other objects.
2. Received signal processing method:
   1. With reinforcement.
   2. Lacking amplification.
3. A sign of the presence of an information storage device:
   1. Registering.
   2. Not registering.

Now you can assemble a night vision device with your own hands.

Make a night vision device with your own hands

The device of the night vision device includes:

1. Converter of infrared radiation into a video signal.
2. A kind of eyepiece that could display the signal in real time.
3. Backlight.

There are many devices in the store that help you shoot at night. The night vision device is obviously based on the same technology. A black and white micro camera will do. It is not cheap, it is available to adapt the gadget to other purposes if the night vision device gets tired. Example devices are JK 007B, JK-926A. The main thing is that the device has a video output, the port of any camera is built-in, otherwise why is it needed at all! The purchase price should not greatly exceed the store cost of a night vision device (see above), otherwise greed will stifle. Take comfort, our device will be able to register, the option is worth extra money on the counter.

Find an old viewfinder. Visit a repair shop household appliances if there is no suitable good at home. The viewfinder is equipped with one video input according to the protocol used by the camera.

The question can be clarified by interviewing local pros, checking the operation by connecting the devices with a cable. It works - it remains to buy a backlight. Order LEDs on the Internet, shake the nearest market. How to check? There is a video camera shooting at night. Go into the darkness, turn on the power, see if the radio element glows: point the lens of the video camera.

Do-it-yourself foreign amateur recommends combining a dozen LEDs with garlands of 6 pieces on a branch. Connect the bunch with a 10 ohm shunt, supply battery power. It is difficult to confuse the polarity, just in case, use a special guide to LEDs. The backlight block is ready. LEDs are mounted on a homemade case: an ordinary children's pencil case, packaging.

Actually, it's ready. Connect the camera and viewfinder with a video cable, placing the lens in the same plane with the LEDs. Given the size of the devices, they will fit in one pencil case. The viewfinder is attached to the side. For the registration device, you will need to mount the appropriate connector in the housing. Night vision devices from China can not be compared with ours! Consider the operation:

1. The night camera captures the surroundings.
2. LEDs illuminate objects for better visibility.
3. The viewfinder projects an image that is visible to the eye.
4. If necessary, registration is carried out through a special connector.

Do not be surprised if you fail to see distant objects, the LED beams do not reach. The night vision device has disadvantages: there are no glasses, the cost of new components is high, it is necessary to buy, place batteries in the case. explained plain language the principle of operation of the device. Purpose: to show how to make a night vision device from improvised means. However, a couple of reagents were probably lying around in the chemistry room. Try to slow down the teacher!

Shop night vision devices

The night vision device Cyclops is so named because instead of glasses he received a monocular. Useful for a one-eyed giant. Like others, a night vision device is characterized by three parameters:

1. Resolution in arc minutes. The smallest part of the field of view that can be distinguished from a similarly sized adjacent one.
2. Gain.
3. Line of sight.

For the devices to work, a faint reflection of the stars is enough, if the moon illuminates the sky, the picture will become clear. Celestial bodies will illuminate the landscape no worse than the LEDs mentioned above. Of course, if you look at the sky, you can study Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, but the picture will be filled with a whitish glow.

The monocular night vision device Zenith has a built-in backlight, a piezoelectric energy converter for power supply. The brand supplies hunters with sights, do not confuse. Especially for people with blurry vision, lens adjustment for the missing diopters is available. Get night vision goggles for reading in the dark!

NPF Dipol produces night vision devices, the products do not differ in affordable prices. However, you need to look at the purpose of the device. There is an opportunity to pay 190 thousand rubles for glasses, for this money the Belarusians will sell a cool unit for a night tour of the surroundings. Catch the hijackers, watch the shameless returning from the party, punish the defilers of the area!

In this article I will show you how to make simple night vision goggles. Of course, they will not be super powerful as real ones, but getting to the right place in the room in the dark will not be so difficult. All the necessary details can be found in your home, you can order them from the Chinese, or you can just read this article for general development.

There is an action camera in the design of the glasses, 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 these suddenly turn out to be available. It is convenient to use a flashlight because you do not need to make a separate box for power supply and it is much easier to mount it.

If you turn on the flashlight and look at the diode through the camera, you can observe a lilac glow, this is infrared light. It is not visible to the human eye, but through the camera please!

But not all cameras of a lonely person perceive such radiation well, so the author used the action camera, as it coped with the task better than others, moreover, such a camera has many settings that will help improve the perception of radiation.

We also need lenses for glasses virtual reality, which were bought 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 that are directly in front of it at a minimum distance.

To fix the lens, you need to assemble the frame. Auto used a dark plastic drink bottle for this purpose.

The lens exactly fits the diameter of the neck, it remains only to fix it there.

To do this, you don’t need to glue anything, you just need to cut out with a blade or knife the middle part of the cork from the same bottle.

Then we put the lens in it and twist it onto the bottle. It seems that the lens was specially made according to the diameter of the neck, since the cork twists easily and fixes it.

Now you need to cut off the top 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 layouts. 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 fix the optics from the bottle segment to this viewing window. To do this, mark the edges of the window with molar tape and cut off everything superfluous without touching the tape. You will get two protrusions that should be easily 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 chance that the camera cannot be pulled back, so the author decided to make cuts for the fingers and the record button. After a little refinement, the camera can be removed from the box without any problems.

To protect glasses from chips, we glue the glasses with molar tape. We take a crown and drill a hole in the center evenly from both sides. The author recommends not drilling to the end, leaving thin plastic, then finishing the hole with a clerical knife, this will help to avoid possible chips and cracks during drilling.

After the hole is made, the optic should be freely inserted there, but as you can see in the photo, the camera is directed to the side and needs to be aligned.

Then, using sandpaper, I cleaned all the edges and using super glue glued everything in its place.

To fix the lantern, plumbing clips of the required diameter were used, which are selected based on the dimensions of the lantern.

The clips are attached to the side of the goggles with bolts and nuts. After that, the lantern is easily fixed and securely held in place. The infrared flashlight can be replaced with a regular one and, as mentioned above, remove good videos from the first person.

For a more secure fixation, the author recommends securing the 32nd tube with nylon ties, since the camera is heavy and the super glue mount may not 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, run the ties in them and tighten them, now it’s definitely reliable!

This article will focus on zero-generation night vision devices. What exactly are these devices? Zero generation night vision devices are the simplest types of the family of these devices that have active illumination. These devices operate in the near infrared range. It should be noted that remotes from TVs and household appliances work in the same range.

Let's finish this introductory part and proceed to the assembly of the device, but before that we suggest watching the video

What we need:
- old webcam;
- 4 infrared LEDs;
- 4 resistors of 50 ohms;
- a piece of plastic;

At the very beginning, it is necessary to clarify the features of some materials. Infrared LEDs can be removed from old remotes. The author does not recommend using more than four LEDs. And the plastic that we will use in the assembly should be translucent with infrared rays, but not translucent with ordinary light. The best option would be exposed film. In its absence, you can simply connect the camera and look through different pieces of plastic. According to the author, soft black folders from Erich Krauser are excellent. Let's get started.

First of all, we disassemble our webcam and unscrew the lens from it.

Next, we look at exactly where the filter is located in the camera. Sometimes the filter we need is in the lens holder and is installed inside. That is, in order to remove it, you need to unscrew the two screws on the back side, remove the holder or simply break the filter and screw the holder back. The author has a filter installed in the lens.

To do this, he simply lifts the upper retaining ring and pulls out the light filter itself. This filter passes only the visible part of the light and blocks infrared rays, which is not acceptable if we want to use infrared radiation.

Now, instead of the old light filter, we need to put our new one and assemble the webcam back.

Each LED has two outputs. We need to connect their cons.

Now we need to connect a resistor to each plus.

We connect the free ends of the resistors together.

Now it remains to connect the received block to the webcam. We connect the minus to the black wire, and the plus to the red one.

A device that allows you to effectively observe in conditions where there is no light at all or it is not enough to build an image with the naked eye. Similar conditions can be observed both in open areas (moonless cloudy night) and indoors (basement without windows and electric lighting, attic, etc.)

Modern night vision devices mainly use two principles of operation:

• Passive. They capture a few quanta of visible light, amplify them many times with an electron-optical converter (EOC) and create a visible image. Such devices do not illuminate the target with any radiation, so the fact of observation cannot be detected. Main disadvantage of a similar design - complete uselessness in the dark.
• Active. They illuminate the target with radiation belonging to that part of the spectrum that the human eye cannot see. Most often, this role is played by infrared radiation. An infrared illuminator, LED or laser can act as an illumination device. The device with infrared illumination can work even in the absence of natural light. However, a stream of infrared radiation (although not visible to the naked human eye) can be detected using another night vision device, and the fact of observation will be detected.

Many devices combine both principles, acting in the presence of at least some natural radiation as passive devices, and in the complete absence of light, switching to infrared illumination.

It is easier to implement a home-made design on an active principle, so further we will talk about such devices.

How to illuminate a target with an infrared beam?

There are also two main schemes here. The first assumes that a laser or LED is used for illumination, which emit infrared light with a wavelength invisible to the ordinary eye. The laser generates a very narrow beam, in addition, this works in a short pulse mode, which makes the backlight noticeably less detectable.

Such schemes are quite compact, but illuminate the area only within a rather narrow cone. The view of such a scheme is small, so it will be more difficult to detect targets against the backdrop of the landscape. Such devices are better suited for tracking those targets that have already been detected.

A much wider field of view can be achieved if an infrared illuminator is used to illuminate targets. In this device, the lamp is placed in the reflector cone, and the aperture of the cone is closed by a lens made of a material that cuts off all waves except infrared radiation. Such a spotlight illuminates the surroundings with a wide cone, so a sufficient field of view is created. The range at which you can see the target and distinguish it against the background of the landscape depends on the power of the lamp and can reach up to half a kilometer for the best factory samples.

How to convert an infrared beam into visible light or see the invisible?

Once we've created an area of ​​infrared illumination, the question arises: how can we detect the IR rays reflected from the target if we can't see them with our eyes? To do this, you need a device called an electron-optical converter (EOP). The image intensifier performs with infrared light the following actions:

• Captures infrared radiation emitted by the illuminator and reflected from the target.
• Converts captured light into a stream of electrons.
• Enhances the flow of electrons with the help of an amplifier (not all image intensifier tubes have such an opportunity).
• Converts the flow of electrons into light, visible to the eye observer or recorded by a video camera.

To date, several generations of image intensifier tubes have already been replaced. Each next generation gives an ever better picture, but the price also rises significantly, which is associated with the use of more and more complex and expensive components in the design. At the same time, even first-generation converters create an image of quite acceptable quality, suitable for solving many problems.

What do you need to make your own?

To make glasses, we need several components:

• IR light capture device. This role can be played by any camera that has a night mode. It is clear that the camera should not be too expensive, otherwise its use in the design will be unprofitable. A webcam is fine for a star-starved night instrument, but it needs a bit of tweaking. From it you need to pull out an infrared lens - a filter for infrared waves. Now the camera can be used in night mode using infrared illumination.
• Source of infrared waves. To do this, you can use a ready-made infrared flashlight (the most simple, but expensive option). With a lack of budget, you can take an ordinary LED from a television remote control as an IR illumination. Its power is not enough to build an image at large distances, but to illuminate, say, a landing or other similar space, the light will be quite enough.
• Source of power. It is desirable that it be not scarce enough and provide a decent autonomy of the device. Batteries or accumulators of the AA, AAA standard look good in this role. For more complex stationary devices, you can also take care of a device that provides power from the household electrical network.
• Auxiliary elements- the last group of things needed to create homemade night vision goggles. They are not directly involved in creating the image, but they protect the circuit from dust and dirt or increase the comfort of use. It is worth taking care of some kind of pencil case as a body and a bracket for mounting on goggles or a helmet-mask from a headlamp. The bracket can be made, for example, from parts of a children's metal designer.

The details are ready. What's next?

A black and white micro camera, such as JK 007B or JK-926A, can be taken as a device that will catch IR light. We are looking for a simple video finder for the camera. If there is nothing suitable in your stock, you can pick up an inexpensive part in the repair service consumer electronics. It is important that the viewfinder receives video using the same protocols in which it is created by the microcamera.

We purchase IR LEDs in a store or on the Internet. The purchased diode must be checked by looking at its light in a dark room with the naked eye and using a night camera. In the first case, the light should not be visible, and in the second, it should be visible well. Now we mount the tested LEDs in any box that will serve as a case (for example, a children's plastic pencil case).

Foreign amateur designers recommend a circuit of two strings of six diodes each. As a shunt - a resistor with a resistance of 10 ohms to all diodes. Now you can supply power from a conventional battery. When using another LED, we check the value of the shunt according to the reference books.

The camera lens must be placed in the same plane as the LEDs (in the same housing). We mount the viewfinder on the side, connect the power supply and place the assembled device on the frame or helmet-mask. Now our device is ready, and you can try it during night observation.

As you can see, with little skills and knowledge of how to get down to business, you can assemble a fully functional night vision device with your own hands. Of course, before assembling, it is also a good idea to familiarize yourself with the prices of devices available for sale, so as not to reinvent the wheel, but to use a factory solution if the cost advantage is not too big.

How to make a night vision device from a mobile phone? Surely your friends will be very surprised when you show them that the camera of your mobile phone works in complete darkness.

Necessary materials:

1. Mobile phone;
2. Screwdrivers, sewing needle or pin;
3. Infrared diodes and resistor;
4. Power supply for 9-12v.

And so, let's get to work. First of all, we understand mobile phone and get to the camera, which we will also disassemble.

In this model of the phone, the camera has autofocus, it is more difficult to disassemble them, but I can say for myself that I carefully disassembled everything with a knife (yes, yes, there were no screwdrivers of such small sizes).

Now the main thing is to find an infrared lens. Practice has shown that they are easy to determine by shape. They are square or rectangular, the rest of the lenses are round, so you will not be confused.

I removed the lens with a needle. Everything turned out to be much easier than I thought. The lens itself was not glass, but plastic, and I removed it with a needle very easily, without even damaging it.

After removing the lens, we assemble the camera and phone back.

Now we need infrared light so that the camera works in the dark, the human eye does not perceive it, but your converted mobile phone now does).

The easiest option I have used is to buy 4 IR diodes, connect them in series with a resistor, power them from 12V. Well, for beauty, I put them in a box.

Who does not know, such IR diodes are in the remotes from the TV and in other remotes. Well, if you have an IR flashlight, then this is just perfect, since the camera will see tens of meters.