Night vision DIY

Well since paul planted the seed the other day about how i should use some night vision gear for my hunting i have been doing some research. There are a lot of options out there for doing it on a budget such as reversing cameras which already have IR built in, you can get these off trade me for under $100.00 with screen, but i want to pay less than that and i want to see how cheap i can go and still see what i am doing. I plan to use things i have around the house and dont plan on spending to much cash to experiment this with. Im going to set my budget at $40.00. Can this be done? who knows, but its going to be good finding out.

So this is my master plan. I plan to use my smart phone to hook up to a usb camera, I brought a OTG lead to plug into the phone from Jcar for 7 bucks and a universal phone bracket from the 2 dolla shop to hold the phone to the scope. The usb camera will be out of an old HP laptop which i plan to convert to run off a usb cable. I have my spotlight which i will convert to IR as well.


So first off i needed to strip the camera out of the laptop which was pretty easy only 4 screws to hold the plastic face plate on then the camera was only held on with double sided tape. I made sure i took the wires and plug out without damaging the plug or cable. next i got an old usb cable and cut the square plug off. removed the foil shielding from the exposed wires and stripped the wires so the copper was showing. Next i did the same with the wires from the camera. I used a multi meter to find the earth which in this case were the set of white wires. that left 3 wires a red one a yellow one and a green one. the red one was power and the other two connected to signal for the usb. Put it all together and i now have a working USB camera. I tested it on my PC and it gives out 640x480 @ 30fps not bad for free.

Next thing i had to do was test it to make sure it can see IR. to do this i just got the remote control for the TV and pushed the power button in front of the camera and looked to see if i could see the led light up and yes i can! so that a good start. I am not sure if these have a IR filter built in or not i wont know that till i have finished my IR torch and test it in the dark. if i cant see anything i will need to pull it apart and remove the filter.

Thats as far as i have got so more to follow shortly.