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Night Vision Scope From Scavenged Parts
Caydel writes "Greg Miller appears to have built a Night Vision Scope out of an image intensifier tube, and parts he found mostly in dumpsters. Also on Greg's site: Flyback transformers, coil guns, plasma globes and Tesla coils made from dumpster materials." You get the feeling he's not also writing product safety manuals on the side.
But can it see through clothes?
What about its cost (I know this comes from a dumpster but Hell, some might have less difficulties buying the part than finding these) ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
This guy is one mullet and a bra-strap-propelled rocket away from his own 80's series.
A nuclear bomb made out of a bomb casing and pinball machine parts?
or how about a server that can withstand the slashdot effect using only cup n string modems and various junkyard parts?
I'd bet he'd win the robot wars competition with his level of skill.
I mean come on that's the main cost of a night scope
Can it see through clothes?
I'm a big tall mofo.
Isn't this a dupe from the dinosaur age???
just my 2 bytes
Now we might expect him to fry his eyes due to the super night vision toy. Hell WHat'll be next? A cutsom made /. attacking server which /. every site that the readers of /. goes to?
Manual please? :)
May
I wonder if this will be used by various guerilla groups to try and even up the technological battleground.
... but really old news.
From the disclaimer
Last updated: 05/07/03
It's angelfire, so bandwidth limit probably won't take long to be reached.../ infrared.html
http://www.angelfire.com.nyud.net:8090/80s/sixmhz
Also, this project was from May '03.
I managed to get most of the pages in before the /.ing
Hack A Day's story referencing Miller's night-vision project can be found here;
http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000107028849/
Lots of similar DIY projects, including peltier beverage coolers and linux-powered weather balloons, can be found at;
http://www.hackaday.com/
Have the editors never heard of nyud or other caching services? How long before this poor guy's site gets terminated for using up its available bandwidth?!
because the department of homeland security will be knocking on his door pronto.
Excuse mr, you have just won a free vacation to the beautiful island of Cuba. do not bother to pack your stuff. everything has been arranged for you.
after that they have to start watching landfills and monitoring scavengers's behavior. "Excuse mr hobo, where do you think you are going with that rusted coathanger? not planing an attach on the pentagon, are we?"
althogh this seems cool, you won't see me puting a flyback transformer any where near my face.
Gordon McComb's Gadgeteers Goldmine ( http://tinyurl.com/4jw9t ) has some plans for doing this. While some of the projects are pretty flawed (the Tesla coil design is anything but efficient) it's a reasonable read.
Paris Hilton was said to be very interested in this device.
Hang on, thats not news is it.
liqbase
Night Vision is a 60-70 year old technology,
Ther Germans used the Vampir in WWII for crying out loud. I dont know when the first US night vision appeared but it was pre Korea
I can build a 1 tube radio too, and theyre basically on the same level tech wise.
Now why dosent someone build one of those cool doppler thingamajigies that ses in the dark and throught smoke and fog, now THAT would be cool , and a little more recent technology wise.
I mean night vision ? I can do it with my 99$ Camcorder. A doppler I haven seen for under about 5 grand.
Come on, this guy just got lucky in finding the one crucial part to make is night vision device.
I'd say the biggest difference between US troops and those fighting them is training, not equipment. At least not the small-arms, personal-type equipment. It's always nice to have tanks and a smart-bomb-dropping air force on your side when the enemy doesn't.
I built a IR scope in 1988 (in high school) from a surplus tube, a transformer from an old monitor, and some surplus optics.
It won me a $500 scholarship from the Army, which paid for my freshman Biology textbooks when I got to college.
This is news?
Specialization is for insects. - R.A.H.
but is there actually any use for Tesla coils in one's own home.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I won't root for victory by a side that stones gays and denies women the right to vote.
Armed with the night vision scope and shopping cart, we can make those nightly dumpster scavenging rounds really fruitful.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Mirrordot link
-dk
the neighbours will be leaching your juice, otherwise.
Ok, the goggles and stuff might be fun. ok. but building a tesla coil ?
Pardonnez moi ?
This is not only highly dangerous, but also incredibly stupid. While he DOES notice that the very strong electromagnetic field does turn on and off other devices nearby, he still keeps fiddling with it.
There is no clue about the frequency his coil effectively produces, but simply the fact that there are at least some 50.000 volts wouldnt want me to have this device active, unless in a controller environment. (read: laboratory)
And, whats more, he also puts it on the net for other whackos to attempt, too.
Great.
Quotes from other "projects" from this dude:
" Also you'll need to drill a hole in the microwave cover to get the hose out the back because you WILL *IMPORTANT* put the panel back on the microwave before operation or you will get cooked with RF radiation."
wohoo, at least he is aware that the panel is vital.
For those people who aint really into tech: a microwave oven heats up water molecules. and a human body consists of mostly water....
go figure.
I for one, wouldnt be surprised if this man dies a young death from cancerial deseases.....
Powerful is he who overpowers his temptations.
If the picture featured on the web site is an indication of image quality, then this starlight scope really blows.
The overall size of the scope looked rather impractical as well.
Even more interesting stuff: 10Mbps optical link "Ronja" (for wireless LAN-speed connections) and best of all, GPL licensed.
839*929
And, whats more, he also puts it on the net for other whackos to attempt, too.
Great.
And, whats more, he also puts it in the bookstorefor other whackos to attempt, too.
Great.
Cool book , i guess i'am a whacko though
You can get better results from a ordinary web cam. Take the ir filter off of the lens and put it back together, add a few ir led's and bingo you got night vision.
Got Code?
Incorrect Use Of The Apostrophe S !!!!!
... but please note that the possessive form of it does not take an apostrophe any more than ours, yours or hers do ... however, if there are two or more dogs, companies or Joneses in our example, the apostrophe comes after the 's':
The rules concerning the use of Apostrophes in written English are very simple:
1. They are used to denote a missing letter or letters, for example:
I can't instead of I cannot
I don't instead of I do not
it's instead of it is
2. They are used to denote possession, for example:
the dog's bone
the company's logo
Jones's bakery (but Joneses' bakery if owned by more than one Jones)
the bone is in its mouth
the dogs' bones
the companies' logos
Joneses' bakeries
3. Apostrophes are NEVER ever used to denote plurals! Common examples of such abuse (all seen in real life!) are:
Banana's for sale which of course should read Bananas for sale
Menu's printed to order which should read Menus printed to order
MOT's at this garage which should read MOTs at this garage
1000's of bargains here! which should read 1000s of bargains here!
New CD's just in! which should read New CDs just in!
Buy your Xmas tree's here! which should read Buy your Xmas trees here!
Note: Special care must be taken over the use of your and you're as they sound the same but are used quite differently:
your is possessive as in this is your pen
you're is short for you are as in you're coming over to my house
We are aware of the way the English language is evolving during use, and do not intend any direct criticism of those who have made the mistakes above. We are just reminding all writers of English text, whether on notices or in documents of any type, of the correct usage of the apostrophe should you wish to put right mistakes you may have inadvertently made.
On our Examples page you will see pictures of real-life apostrophe abuse!
For general enquiries about Apostrophe Protection Society membership, please contact its Chairman by Email by clicking: john.richards2@virgin.net
$20 example
Webcam image sensor have been sensitive to infrared for ages.
Finally, some manufacturers have got the sense to leverage that by removing the infrared filter in front in the lens, and adding some infrared LEDs for illumination.
I've got one, and played around with it to get a similar picture as the guy in the article got with his image intensifier tube.
All the better to peep you with my dearie!
Under the "Discouraging Occurances" section:
8. While standing in the dumpster, feeling some part of your body getting wet by something....
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Among the stuff we used to work with were high voltage induction coils, the odd home-made low pressure gas discharge device - a good way of checking your vacuum technique - low power radioactive sources for playing with simple cloud chambers and trying to deflect alpha and beta rays with a watercooled electromagnet - and extracting short half life radionucleides from samples of yellow cake. (I did have enough sense to know that you don't breathe thorium oxide dust and that you handle uranyl nitrate carefully.) That and getting a signal big enough to light up a small bulb across the lab using a klystron. And he would let us get on with this stuff unsupervised - something about kids need trust in order to learn.
Nearly 40 years later I am not only still alive but still building stuff, probably because those early experiences gave me the confidence to try things.
Being quite ruthless, anybody who tries stuff around HV and microwaves and doesn't have the brain to spot when things are going wrong, probably needs to be removed from the gene pool anyway. And anybody who tries and has the brain and initiative to stick at it will learn something. We can't all expect to make our livings for the next twenty years by either recording not very good music and selling it for inflated prices, or suing people who actually have a business. Buying geek toys is no substitute for making them, and things that just go bang or send projectiles a long way are not the only way to have fun with physics.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
OMG!! He gets extra points for using a lamp shade on a tesla coil. That's bloody wicked. This guy could be so dangerous if he hooked up with the likes of Dr.Evil or Al Qaeda.
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
I have heard that some of the early image-intensifier tubes had X-ray problems (often occur when you accelerate electrons to high velocities and they hit metal targets)...
Why is it that everytime someone makes something from parts they have "lying around", there's always one part they just happened to have, that is rare and/or expensive?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Why isn't anyone asking why he is searching through a "dumper" in the first place???
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
Hm which research facility does this guy leave near? People generally do not have this kind of hardware....and what are the chances thta if someone does he happens to be there on the day they put it in a dumpster?
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I could get all that and more decades ago from Edmund Scientific.
Is this dude related to David Hahn?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/ir.htm
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
Try playing around with the space/time continuum:
The Resonant Gravity Field Coil!
I wanna see some nutball actually try to build one, just to see what would happen. I'm guessing a large fire...
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking
Dumpster diving is great fun. There are a half-dozen 19" racks in the dumpster next to our work right now. I got two rack shelves and four levelling feet off them last week. Figure I saved at least $50 by not buying them retail. And, let's face it, my local Home Depot is unlikely to carry the stuff...
Remember that because of the filter in front, at any given moment the grey will represent the R, G, or B level.
For example, when the filters are on red:
dim spectrum -> filter -> dim red
dim red -> photomultiplier -> bright white
bright white -> filter -> bright red
Similarly, for green:
dim spectrum -> filter -> dim green
dim green -> photomultiplier -> bright white
bright white -> filter -> bright green
Get the idea?
DNA just wants to be free...
A /. editor joking about another product's lack of safety procedures wouldn't be so bad if slash code didn't have some amazingly obvious defects and holes itself...
Where can I find these dumpsters full of electronic treasure!? I consider myself lucky if the dumpsters I'm thrown into don't have shards of glass or used needles.
That's right, the U.S. armies training lags behind that of most of the rest of the worlds Armed forces and as we have been seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan behind a lot of the terrorists either.
I've been doing it since I was a kid. You find all kinds of interesting stuff.
Forums: http://www.dumpsterworld.net
now i can sit alone in my room on a saturday night in the dark!.
The Grocer's Apostrophe (Banana's, Potato's) is less illiterate than you think, and when the NYT uses "MP3's" it is following an established tradition. The usages you quote, MOT's, CD's and 1000's, are in this tradition, and are at least as valid as the omission - if you are being pedantic, 1000s is illiterate and should be written as "thousands".
Your mistake is the usual one of the partly educated: you think that grammar is fixed at a particular, arbitrary point in time. It's just like English lawyers going around dressed in 18th Century robes and wigs, or the Jewish sect that dresses in 18th Century Middle European costume: why is that particular period so important in a tradition that has evolved over a thousand years or so? Your rules are a mixture of the logical and the arbitrary, and I suspect your Society is a joke.
http://www.angelfire.com/80s/sixmhz/trashy.html
this guy is unbalanced...
"You will not be able to locate the high voltage return pin with a multimeter. The only way to do it is to bring the high voltage line down to the pins and whichever one it arcs like mad to is the one yer looking for. Try to stay away from arcing to any of the pins used for coils."
"With such small current at this voltage you can even touch the glass with only a tingling sensation to your fingers (no permanent damage) but don't bet your life on it."
"I intend to keep pushing a flyback until the coils melt or it explodes."
Excellent. I'm coming for you Clairice....
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
There is no clue about the frequency his coil effectively produces, but simply the fact that there are at least some 50.000 volts wouldnt want me to have this device active, unless in a controller environment. (read: laboratory)
Well I guess that makes you a pussy, pussy!
Is there actually any use for Tesla?
Use your imagination...
The next JACKASS MOVIE?
(oh the pain...)
One interesting "glitch" I had noticed in years of using CCD based analog video camcorders (VHS/8MM), is that the IR LED on the front of remote controls would show up as a bright white light (it would appear on a brightness level comparable to a bright white LED).
So my question is, would it be possible to scavenge a common video camera (dirt cheap at Goodwill or yard sales), turn off the electronic shutter, and build a similar night vision scope?
You have pretty much everything you need shy of a bank of IR LEDs to work with, and could possibly retrofit an old camera light to act as the emitter. Of course, we all know about the Sony "X-Ray" video camera as well, which worked on a similar principal.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Finally, absolutely convincing proof that everyone needs a cross-cut shredder: Salvaged Photos
a tinfoil hat would help?
Enjoy Every Sandwich
He's not a bunch of "I'm smarter than you" assholes that go around and say how insignificant what other people do but never gets around to doing anything significant themselves.
He sat down and went through the trouble of actually building a night vision scope.
What have all you assholes done besides all the regular script-kiddie bullshit hacks?
It's pretty neat to read about a Darwin award winner *before* he blows himself up.
Now wash your hands.
i found 2 perfectly good labtops in somebodies trash that just needed some good old hard disk cleaning. Most people think something is broke and throw it away without question. And those unique items, he states where he found some of these.
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
And to think that I made my cheapo night vision by replacing the led in an led flashlight ($5 wally world) with a high-output IR led from RadioShack ($2). I just use my digital camera to view since the ccd is IR sensitive.
Total dev time 5 minutes, total skill required zero.
Greg's project is still pretty cool, I'm just much lazier than he.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
Folks,
I shouldn't have to tell you this, but projects like this are about fun, challenge, the laws of physics and seeing what can be done. If you insist on practicality, consider that people who have spent years taking apart machines and devices and building all kinds of electrical apparatuses (useful or not) become very skilled engineers. And skilled engineers can be extremely useful.