I recently decided to build a pair of infrared NV goggles. My idea is to build the unit into a modified pair of those ugly bulky safety goggles you can find at just about any hardware store. They would be spray painted black so visible light wont leak out, the normal straps would be replaced with rubber ones, and a strap across the top would be added to keep the unit stable.
I haven't yet decided whether to use a ready-made infrared flashlight, or to make one using LED's mounted to a circuit board (I'll probably use a premade one though, since it will have better focusing then anything I could make.) To pick up the infrared light, I plan to simply use a digital camera looped to an lcd display (possibly even 2, one for each eye, to create some depth perception).
The problem I'm running into is finding a unit that fits my needs. I would highly prefer to not jam an entire brand-new $20 brand-name digital camera into the unit, needless items including but not limited to: A case, (that's the whole point of the goggles), a power supply (I plan to store this on the rear of my head where the straps meet, and have it power both the camera unit and the IR flashlight, meaning (1) less weight (2) only one power switch and (3) only one set of batteries to change), not to mention about 30 useless features that I really wouldn't need on even a normal camera.
So basically I'm looking for a ccd module directly looped into an lcd display, preferably designed to accept 3v from two AA batteries, and I have no idea where to begin looking. Any suggestions (even just some basic keywords for Google would be fine)?
As a side note: The only main problem I can find with my device is camera focus (just noticed this as I was reading over what I wrote; I mentioned the need for good flashlight focus, but said nothing about focus for a camera). Would I be able to strip down a $5 film camera with a manual focus and use the focusing lens from that? If not, does anyone have any other suggestions on how this might be achieved? Thnx
I haven't yet decided whether to use a ready-made infrared flashlight, or to make one using LED's mounted to a circuit board (I'll probably use a premade one though, since it will have better focusing then anything I could make.) To pick up the infrared light, I plan to simply use a digital camera looped to an lcd display (possibly even 2, one for each eye, to create some depth perception).
The problem I'm running into is finding a unit that fits my needs. I would highly prefer to not jam an entire brand-new $20 brand-name digital camera into the unit, needless items including but not limited to: A case, (that's the whole point of the goggles), a power supply (I plan to store this on the rear of my head where the straps meet, and have it power both the camera unit and the IR flashlight, meaning (1) less weight (2) only one power switch and (3) only one set of batteries to change), not to mention about 30 useless features that I really wouldn't need on even a normal camera.
So basically I'm looking for a ccd module directly looped into an lcd display, preferably designed to accept 3v from two AA batteries, and I have no idea where to begin looking. Any suggestions (even just some basic keywords for Google would be fine)?
As a side note: The only main problem I can find with my device is camera focus (just noticed this as I was reading over what I wrote; I mentioned the need for good flashlight focus, but said nothing about focus for a camera). Would I be able to strip down a $5 film camera with a manual focus and use the focusing lens from that? If not, does anyone have any other suggestions on how this might be achieved? Thnx
