
Building Night Vision Goggles for $100 with Raspberry Pi - NicoJuicy
https://blog.hackster.io/build-the-night-vision-goggles-youve-always-wanted-for-100-with-raspberry-pi-e54777799a7b?source
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dTal
Nice build, but the night vision goggles I've always wanted use either light
amplification (like in Jurassic Park) or thermal imaging. You're not likely to
build those for $100, but that's why this seemed an interesting click.
Infrared LEDs plus a near infrared camera is rather humdrum (it's built into
my laptop for instance) and can be built for far less than $100, albeit with a
bit less polish.

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mrsteveman1
You can get a FLIR Lepton 3 thermal sensor for about $150-180 used, typically
in the form of an older FLIR One 2nd Gen iOS/Android dongle (eBay).

160x120 resolution isn't _great_ (320x240 is generally the "good enough for
casual night imaging" resolution), but those are the best you can do before
stepping up to a minimum of $500+ per image sensor (seek compact pro).

Here's an image set of a cat walking around a fenced-in deck next to a tree:
[https://imgur.com/a/WmuQ1lA](https://imgur.com/a/WmuQ1lA)

If you look carefully in one image, you can see the heat from the paw prints
remaining visible as a line in the grass. You can't see the actual prints at
that resolution, but the sensor is absolutely good enough to see trails like
that, especially indoors with footprints.

And in terms of intensifier tubes, you can do reasonably well picking up one
of the Gen 1 monoculars sold all over the place, somewhere around $150-200 per
eye, though you have to be careful as some of them are better than others.

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IshKebab
Yeah if you've ever used proper thermal cameras, "not great" is an
understatement. Plus I assume they are limited to 9 FPS which sucks.

Someone really needs to challenge FLIR's monopoly.

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mrsteveman1
The Lepton modules you can buy are limited to 9fps, yes. They do seem to make
some that are higher frame rate, but they aren't advertised anywhere.

FLIR and other companies like Seek[1] are selling 15/30fps imagers that are
not much more expensive, though not in modules for DIY use.

The Seek Compact Pro[2][3] does a pretty good job for the ~$500 price tag

[1] [https://support.thermal.com/hc/en-
us/articles/208377803-What...](https://support.thermal.com/hc/en-
us/articles/208377803-What-is-FastFrame-)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgyr-4u06FU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgyr-4u06FU)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybDpuFecruM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybDpuFecruM)

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msumpter
[https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/95n7fd/night_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/95n7fd/night_vision_zero_night_vision_goggles_for_less/)

Direct link for those who are interested..

~~~
msumpter
[http://imgur.com/a/F2QMhwE](http://imgur.com/a/F2QMhwE)

Sorry forgot to include the galley link

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leoedin
Surely connecting a camera directly to the goggles would give much better
latency? An IR sensitive camera is just a normal CCD/CMOS camera with the IR
filter removed (sometimes with a visible light filter instead).

~~~
squarefoot
AHD might be the answer. Analog, so virtually no latency and much higher
resolution than traditional analog systems. It's becoming widely used in
surveillance and security so that cameras and DVRs prices dropped in the last
year.

A quick search brought this camera module, but so far it appears nobody has
made an AHD pair of goggles.

[https://aliexpress.com/item/1-3MP-960P-AHD-M-Camera-
Module-B...](https://aliexpress.com/item/1-3MP-960P-AHD-M-Camera-Module-Board-
PCB-Circuit-with-AR0130-CMOS-Sensor-for-CCTV/32672241651.html)

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purplezooey
The question is, though, does it make that ramping up squeal/whine sound when
you click them on. That would be cool.

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clanreborn
Using Sonar + thermal imaging + laser probing and using machine learning to
identify different material/distance/texture then using it to create realistic
frames seems better to me.

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nextlevelwizard
Can I assume you have build blog somewhere for this? Or are you just saying
shit for fun?

