Slashdot Mirror
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?
This guy is one mullet and a bra-strap-propelled rocket away from his own 80's series.
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/
You would of at least thought they would have the decency to throw in a few example pictures taken on the Tokyo subway! Come on, don't tempt us lonely geeks like that on the day after Valentines!
Monstar L
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?"
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.
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.
Cost $27 for the image intensifier, and $5 each for several trips to the laundromat after dumpster diving.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
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
Very few people on the Tokyo Subway wear dark bikinis. Surprising as it may seem.
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.
There's an article in New Scientist which reports that Dutch military suppliers have finally solved the problem of using colour-mapping to convert the monochrome images of nightvision systems into colour. Previous attempts to use fake colour mappings had been a failure due to the creation of "psychadelic experiences". Some images of the new system
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
I saw a demo of a much simpler system during a lab at the physics department at my local university. They put a colour wheel (with one red, one blue and one green filter) on each side of the image intensifier and then simply spun that wheel while running the intensifier. Prestor, instant colour night vision. (The non-IR kind.)
Image intesifier: $27
Cost of multiple trips to the laundromat after dumpster diving: $35
Being able to see in the dark after 3,000 volt electric shock: priceless.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
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?
No. This is a Gen 0 tube, which means that you need IR illumination to see. All NVG's can see IR illumination. If you walked aroudn with this at night, to other people with NVG's, you'd look like you had a giant flashlight strapped to your head. That does not bode well for your long-term longetivity on a battlefield.
$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.
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.
because when someone aquires a rare part, the first thing the geek in them says is "duuude i could build an X with this!"
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I read in an article about the new Army uniforms how they had infrared-light sensitive patches on their armbands for FoF identification. My first thought was, "this will be trouble."
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Not only that, if his HV supply is putting out too much voltage, he's getting soft x-rays beamed into his head by this thing...not good.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
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.
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
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.
I've been doing it since I was a kid. You find all kinds of interesting stuff.
Forums: http://www.dumpsterworld.net
but is there actually any use for Tesla coils in one's own home.
In case some wise-ass tries to send prism tanks after you.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Didn't ol' Doc Brown sell the Libyans a bomb casing filled with pinball machine parts and keep the uranium to power his time machine?
Come on, now....
Finally, absolutely convincing proof that everyone needs a cross-cut shredder: Salvaged Photos