I bought an IR unit and when I plugged it in, it gives off a redish light. In other words, when the unit is plugged in and you look directly at it, you see the REDISH LEDs. In complete darkness you can see the unit. I’m looking for an IR unit that doesn’t give off ANY light.

Could it be the type of IR LED in the unit I have? Are there any other types of IR LED that don’t give off any light?

My thing is that I’m trying to set up a unit that you can not see at all specially in complete darkness.

Any suggestions/Help???? Thanks in advanced.:)

Thank you for the explanation! I’m going to look into this further

Just wondering, do all camera’s pick up the IR spectrum?

I know my videocamera uses it for the ‘night vision’ option, but I didnt realize those security cams can ’see’ it too..

If you look around a little at various websites offering surveillance cameras, you will notice some that have IR LED’s in them. These are always Black/White camera’s. Over here in the Netherlands they also use this IR light in cameras that take your photo when speeding.
The IR light is of course a colored light. You will not notice this on a B/W camera, but on a color camera you will see distorted colors. Like looking through a color filter. During daytime these IR LED’s won’t do anything, because they don’t submit as much light as the sun. So, if you’re not bothered by this effect, you could use it to have a lightsource for the camera at nighttime, without the need for a motionsensor/lamp.

What you need are IR LED’s with as much light as possible.
Some possible types:
Osram LD274-3 ($0.25) Lightangle 10′
Osram SFH484-2 ($0.25) Lightangle 20′
The smaller lightangle is better because it concentrates the light to the area the camera sees. Prices are indications !

Now what you do is make a series of LED’s around the camera lens. If possible you can feed them from the powersupply of the camera.

You need to make a little calculation. The maximum forward current for the types above is 100mA. If you have a 12V power supply, the resistance needed to limit the current is R=U/I, which means 12/0.1=120 Ohm. This resistance goes in series with the LED’s, effectively a long chain of LED’s plus the resistor. You can experiment a little with lower resistor values (or higher), but going too low will damage the LED’s. Normally you would use 6-8 LED’s.

Hope this helps.

For the benefit of others that may be considering similar cameras, can you tell us all more about IR LEDs and how they might help the darkness situation?

Visibility in the dark can be greatly enhanced by adding some infrared LED’s. These submit invisible, harmless infrared light.

One thing. The color reproduction will be bad in the dark. But if you only want to see what/who it is at your door, that should be no problem.

Just drop me an email if you need more information.

Yes, you probably could mount the camera behind a peephole if you wished.

ToolkiT:

Excellent idea

I suppose now smaller cameras are available, I might consider trying to do that again. The only difference is that I want to Internet enable the camera. So I can monitor my front door from work.

Does the camera work if you put it behind a door peephole? Though I suppose I could hang it by the door, except then I’d worry about the camera walking away….though I would hopefully get a picture of it happening :p

Don’t feel bad about a 27″ TV that doesn’t even do S-Video…. I’m more than just gadgets, and yet I only have a 21″ TV that doesn’t do S-Video…..but it is 20 years old and does do composite video…so I just use its monitor mode with all my stuff.

My plan though for the new year is to finally get a more substantial TV…..I’m thinking a 42/43″ flat panel or RPTV….of course after I do that, I’ll want to upgrade all kinds of other stuff…like get an A/V receiver that’ll swich component video….a DVD player that does progressive video….though I don’t know if HDTV receiver is in the works….I haven’t seen much live TV in the last 10+ years…so that might be a while.

The Dreamer.

http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/brando-color-spycam-review.html

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