DIY Smartphone Night Vision - For Less Than $50

I've always been fascinated by night vision but a lot of the products on the market are really expensive so today I'm gonna show you how you can turn an Android smartphone into a real set of night vision goggles for less than fifty dollars so first we're going to go over the supplies you'll need and then we'll go designs and then we'll get building so let's get started okay supplies everything you see on the table here can be found in the video description down below if you click the Amazon affiliate links that I provided it helps me out but also it helps you find exactly what you're shopping for that is extremely important when it comes to the web camera this is the logitech c 170 and because we're going to be modifying this later i want to make sure you pick up this exact webcam so you can follow along step-by-step you're also going to need an OTG connector this lets us connect to standard USB devices directly to our smart phone depending on if your smartphone is microUSB or type C make sure to pick up the corresponding low TG connector I have a Samsung Galaxy s4 but as long as you have an Android your phone should work however you're going to need to go to the Play Store and download this application so you can use your phone with your webcam directly you're also going to need an IR flashlight now the listing I provided gives you two options you can get the three chip with a four chip model the three ship is less expensive but the four chip is a lot more powerful I recommend going with the four chip you're also going to need a roll of double-sided film tape that way you can connect your USB webcam and your flashlight to you our headset this is the Samsung gear VR headset if you have a Google cardboard headset that should work although I like the way this one looks a little bit better and also it's a lot more comfortable okay that's it for supplies now we can go over the science behind this project and then we can get building now in order to understand the science behind our project first we need to look at waves light can be expressed in the form of a wavelength in other words the visible spectrum has a wavelength something like this now once we start stepping outside of the visible spectrum if we go to a shorter wavelength such as x-rays these are invisible to the human eye due to their much shorter wavelength the same thing is true for radio waves which happen to have a much longer wavelength which is also invisible to the naked eye now somewhere in between visible spectrum and radio waves exists infrared light or IR light IR light has a longer wavelength than the human eye is capable of seeing however digital cameras are able to see infrared light and I can prove this to you if you take a look at a television remote television remote to use infrared LEDs which are invisible to the human eye but are able to be detected by digital cameras now here's where things get interesting although digital cameras have the ability to see infrared light almost every camera that you encounter will come stock from the factory with a filter that is explicitly meant to filter out most infrared light this is done to improve overall image quality however for our purposes we are going to need to disassemble this web camera and remove our infrared filter so we can see the full infrared spectrum and effectively see in the dark okay the first step is to remove the IR filter from the Logitech webcam so we're going to begin by disassembling this webcam and remove two screws on the back of the body once that's done you can open up the web camera and pop out that microphone and the next step is to remove the two screws that hold the circuit board end ones here and one is here and before we pop out the circuit board make sure to remove these wires okay and the circuit board should come right out alright hopefully you can see this little mark I made with my knife that represents the 12 o'clock position on the lens so the next step is I'm going to unscrew this I'm gonna count how many exact times it takes to unscrew this lens that way when I reinstall it I can make sure it's in the exact same position alright I have my PCB taped down to the table okay that was pretty easy here you can see the image sensor on the camera and here you can see the lens and that little red piece of glass right there is the IR filter that we are going to try to remove so the next step is to make a small incision and hopefully pop that IR filter out all in one piece okay I'm back so essentially what I did was I took my exacto knife and very carefully I carved on the sides of these threads until the IR filter cracked into two pieces so now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to take my exacto knife and very carefully fish out each half of the IR filter there's one okay that actually turned out to be three pieces okay next step is to reassemble okay reassembly now this should be relatively simple as soon as I get these threads started and I think I felt them catch right there okay now keeping track of the amount of rotations that it takes to get this camera back into focus I'm going to carefully screw this back into place alright my mark is back exactly at 12 o'clock and we are ready to reassemble this camera alright the reassembly process is relatively simple it's pretty much what we just did except in reverse order so first step is to place the PCB back into the body make sure to plug those wires back in place that microphone back into the slot where it goes alright and there you have it one Logitech c1 somebody with the IR filter removed okay time for a test run so I have my phone with the app launched I also have my webcam with my OTG connector connected alright so let's plug this baby in see if it still works and a we got an image alright and now I also have the IR flashlight and as you can see you only get a little bit of a red glow from this camera because it's IR filter is still installed however when we take a look through the webcam it takes up way more awesome that's a great sign alright let's move on okay if you got through that first step everything else is going to be a breeze trust me it's downhill from here now we're going to do some work on the VR headset and first we're gonna have to remove these four rubber screw covers and then we're also going to have to remove this plastic screw cover alright next I'll wave to do is unscrew these six screws alright that wasn't that bad now I believe the last step is to turn this knob on the top continuously until the entire assembly comes apart and be careful because it's going to be attached on this little ribbon cable right here the last thing that we need to unscrew are these guys right here okay now that we've removed that pleat this portion here can actually just pop right off okay I would recommend holding on to this because if you ever want to restore your Samsung gear VR you can always just put this thing back together and use it as it was originally intended and now we can just reassemble everything okay next we're going to do a little bit of carving into the plastic it just so happens if the Samsung OTG connector if it's very snugly right into this hole which is gonna work perfect for us however it sits a little bit high and we want to make sure that when the OTG connector is plugged into the phone this entire system sits flush against the VR headset so in order to ensure that we have a proper fitment we're going to need to use our knife to carve down this wall okay that should do it so now when we install this OTG connector that's it's a lot lower in there and that's gonna give us a nice flush fit when we install our phone much better that's perfect okay we're almost done I've gone ahead and installed the head strap to my gear VR and the last step is to install the IR light and the webcam to the top of your headset so I'm going to cut a couple layers of foam tape and install both of these items right up there okay that looks pretty good so the last thing I'm gonna do is hide this wire down in this crevasse here and then I'm gonna coil it up and store it right behind this flap of velcro all right and you are pretty much done that is a complete Samsung gear VR Android night vision headset okay so I'm gonna go over a couple settings that you're going to want to change in the app in order to use these so first open up the app go to the top right hand corner click settings and you're going to want to enable cardboard view that's what lets us use this in VR mode you're probably also going to want to disable the microphone so you don't get any audio feedback then we click back and and if you press the center of the screen and it'll take you into full-screen mode and there is a banner ad at the top you don't actually see that when you're using the VR headset but if you do want to get rid of that you can always pay for the full version of the application next all we have to do is pop off the cover plug in the OTG connector and as soon as we do so you're going to see the green light pop on right there on the actual webcam squeeze everything together and then always for safety and cool fact to reinstall the front cover and then there you go your night vision is working alright it's nighttime now which means we get to test out our night vision so I have the night vision goggle set up I have this camera set up and I'm now going to turn off my studio lights so we can see what the difference is okay give me one quick SEC here lights are out and now the infrared flash light is on so I still can't see anything but I assume I'm looking pretty good here so let's take a look around the room and see what we got here's the back wall that we were looking at and here is the camera that we were looking at that's you guys and everything and looking pretty good wow the room really does just light up how that's awesome okay wow that was a lot of fun I think that was a big success um let me give you a couple tips before you go though so one thing is these setups can get a little bit claustrophobic if you wear them for a long time and that's because these cameras have a relatively tight field of view so one way to combat this is to pick up a clip on wide-angle lens now a lot of companies make these for smartphones but they will actually fit your web camera perfectly so one company a boys I could luck with is Aki and they make really quality products and I'll leave an affiliate link in the description down below if you want to find one but this will overall make your night vision experience much much more enjoyable and it actually lets more light into the camera as well so I'd really suggest picking one of these up now another great option is picking up another IR flashlight so you're gonna have a dual IR setup this will let more light into the system it will help keep your frame rate higher and you'll be able to see farther away objects now the last tip is make sure when you pick up that next flashlight not to forget to turn it off because these things are really easy to forget about because remember humans can't see the IR light and that's what makes this entire system so cool but overall I think this is a great project it's really not that difficult you can finish it in afternoon and I had a lot of fun making it I hope you guys have just as much fun watching is I had making and please leave a comment give me some support give me a like and subscribe if you want to see some more projects in the future have a great day and happy making you

Channel: Bagel or Bandsaw

Views: 105,460

Rating: 4.9239445 out of 5

Keywords: Night Vision, DIY, Homemade, Maker, Design, Project, Infrared, IR, VR, Android, OTG, Bagel or Bandsaw, Smartphone Night Vision, Android Night Vision, Homemade Night Vision, DIY Night Vision

Id: iyZcKewSqEQ

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/BobbyGasoline]

Awesome video. Now I have a reason wreck my old Vr gear.

[u/confusedbrit29]

I've not watched the whole video but does he compare with just using the phones camera, its rare for a camera phone to have a good ir filter if one at all. I guess you can do this just buying the flashlight and using the phones camera.