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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.

15 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. cool by secretsquirel · · Score: 5, Funny

    But can it see through clothes?

  2. And I thought I was geeky... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This guy is one mullet and a bra-strap-propelled rocket away from his own 80's series.

  3. coral cache by supersuckers · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's angelfire, so bandwidth limit probably won't take long to be reached...
    http://www.angelfire.com.nyud.net:8090/80s/sixmhz/ infrared.html
    Also, this project was from May '03.

  4. CORAL Cache Link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    http://www.angelfire.com.nyud.net:8090/80s/sixmhz/ infrared.html

    I managed to get most of the pages in before the /.ing

  5. Hack A Day by wolveso · · Score: 5, Informative

    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/

  6. He should go into hiding... by Interfacer · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?"

  7. Reaction from the stars by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Funny

    Paris Hilton was said to be very interested in this device.

    Hang on, thats not news is it.

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  8. Wow 60 year old technology.... by MajorDick · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  9. This is news? by Caradoc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  10. All we need now... by GillBates0 · · Score: 4, Funny
    is a Shopping Cart made from scavenged parts.

    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
  11. I beg you pardon ?!? by fizze · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:I beg you pardon ?!? by reezle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So you are saying we need to be protected from his ideas?
      Us whacko's will give it a try and kill ourselves because we aren't quite smart enough to recognize the dangerous bits like you have?

      Let me guess. You're from the government. And you're here to help.

  12. Re:No safety manual? by mikael · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  13. Just use a $20 webcam by sonamchauhan · · Score: 4, Informative

    $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.

  14. All the fear from the doomsayers by panurge · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Is misplaced. I went into science because we had a superb physics teacher in high school (he'd left a job as a research engineer basically because, I think, it was too limiting, and he ended up as the schools science adviser for the council.)

    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.