Home made night vision goggles

Well perhaps goggles isn't quite the right word, but night vision scope is.

Now I've looked a few times on google about making a night vision device, trouble is most seem to involve either a silly kids toy thing with coloured gels or the much more complicated build your own type that uses a low light camera, IR leds and the viewfinder of an old camcorder

Now I wanted something both cheap and simple to make, that didn't need an electronics engineer to build, and curiously I found the answer over Christmas.

The device consists of a car dashboard camera which cost about £30 from ebay new and a lupe from a photographic shop that I paid about a £5 for.  The camera has built in infrared and all you have to do is add the lupe (a sort of posh magnifing glass) to the viewing screen of the camera with either tape or glue (mines taped) so I can use it as a dashboard camera as well.

The lupe makes it easier to hold up to your eye for close viewing.

In use the camera works quite well, the built in ir leds will give you a range of about 20-30 feet in total darkness, but you could easily increase that by using a torch with an ir filter taped over the front, it would also be easy enough to mount the thing to a bike helmet or similar for hands free use (might try that myself.

Rear view of camera showing lupe in place

 Shot taken from the camera in total darkness

 Front view of camera showing lens and IR leds surrounding it.