There may have been times when you wanted to have your own infrared security system to monitor the perimeter of your house. The problem is that night vision cameras and illuminators can cause a huge dent in your pocket and so you decided to put your plans on the back burner. Well, you may want to bring that plan back to life again because there is an inexpensive way to have your own home made security system.
You just need a simple webcam, preferably the cheap ones. You would also need some used film negatives, a couple of high intensity infrared LEDs which you can get from any electronics store for less than a dollar, a power device for your LED lights which you can get for less than ten dollars, some cardboard, polarity wires, an electronic bread board, and tools like a soldering gun.
Soldering Gun
First, you have to open the webcam by unscrewing its plastic casing. Then try to remove the webcam's lens assembly from the holder. On some cameras, this is screwed on the assembly, while on other cameras, it just kind of snaps into place.
Once you have taken off the lens, you should see a small square shaped glass stuck at the bottom. That would be the red-tinted infrared filter of the webcam, the one that stops IR light from being captured by the webcam's sensor. Remove this filter carefully with a penknife by slowly scratching the glue off its edges and then levering it out with the same knife.
Replace the IR filter with a used negative, preferably the blackest that you can find, and cut it to two pieces of approximately the same size of the IR filter you took out. Fit these two pieces of cut film into the slot where the IR filter used to be. Carefully affix your new filter with quick drying glue, taking care not to spill some of the glue onto the webcam's lens or on the 2 pieces of negatives.
Put the lens back on the webcam and reassemble the rest of the parts. Then, connect the camera to your computer and see if it can still detect any color. Next, try to put eight high intensity infrared LEDs on a bread-board and connect it using a series-wiring configuration. Make sure the polarity of each LED corresponds to the other and then have it insulated by a thin electrical tape. Attach this assembly to a strong cardboard and connect it to a power supply.
Try to focus your reconfigured webcam to the lights to see if it is powered on. If everything works according to plan, attach these two assemblies on another cardboard by putting the camera on top and the illuminator at the bottom.
Now, you have a working assembly of a near infrared security camera with an illuminator. The best thing about this is it will cost only about forty to fifty dollars. How is that for half an hour's task?
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