Easy to Build Night Vision Viewer

This project is within the reach of anyone with a desire to do a little hardware hacking, and even includes a basic guide to getting started in electronics.

The night vision system consists of three main parts: a low light camera, an invisible light illumination system, and a video viewfinder. The three components work together in order to extend your range of vision into the infrared spectrum. The viewfinder will be powered by the cameras main circuit board, and normally only requires a single DC voltage between 9 and 12 volts to operate.

It is just a vacuum tube about 2 inches in length and an inch in diameter that got a screen that absorbs infrared light and emits electrons from the other side with the aid of a negatively biased high voltage electric field. The emitted electrons are then accelerated in vacuum towards the phosphorescent screen. The 3 kV AC for the intensifier tube is supplied by an old-school flyback transformer and the optics for the infrared viewer are pretty simple and straight forward. To throw some more light on the scene infrared LEDs wired up and glued to the front of the viewer box.

Click here vision viewer-1.aspx to see the rest of the project.