A cool property of NIR filters is that they are able to produce a relatively recognisable picture of the world with all screens (TFT, projected) filtered out. I've used this in the past for computer vision to do object recognition on top of a projected display without having to programmatically filter out the projection.<p>It's also pretty easy to make a rudimentary NIR filter by layering a red, green and blue filter on top of each other: the resulting filter will not allow any visible light through (e.g. red, green or blue), only the "rest".<p>edit: and they make your eyes look really creepy too (not me in the picture btw): <a href="https://flic.kr/p/6CYzDZ" rel="nofollow">https://flic.kr/p/6CYzDZ</a>
I assume the distortions at the edge of the 'photos' is due to the X Y scanning rig. Moving the sensor around the edge of a sphere (on a curved X Y (and a little bit of Z) rig, the focal point being the center of the sphere) would sort that right out.<p>I expect the 3D printer could make a curved rail for the rig.<p>Or you could point the sensor at the center of the pin hole or lens using a mechanical linkage, then use some software to warp the resulting image.
Not just heat, there is a lot of interesting spectral data we don't see. Hyperspectral cameras are rare and expensive right now - but I'm really looking forward to the day they are cheap and commonplace<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcAstSnbVX4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcAstSnbVX4</a><p><a href="http://www.specim.fi/" rel="nofollow">http://www.specim.fi/</a><p><a href="https://www.ximea.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ximea.com/</a>
Forgive my ignorance, but if this system would require liquid nitrogen cooling to detect heat from a human, how do commercial (now almost cheap) thermal cameras work? Are they not sensing IR? The can certainly distinguish the different temperatures of different people, without needing to be cooled themselves.<p>How is this system better than a commercial IR camera -- besides the very obvious and valid reason that this is DIY, and started long before those were cheap?<p>> <i>"The most amazing part is not that it glows, but that it glows brightly enough to illuminate the stand. It’s not just the “temperature mapped to an image” of a regular heat vision camera, we see the actual long-wave light being emitted and reflected – a soldering iron turned into a lightbulb!"</i><p>How is that different from this image, which shows a duck's IR being reflected by water, made by a cheap-o "regular heat vision camera"? <a href="http://thermal-imaging-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/ducks-22.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://thermal-imaging-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/d...</a>
You know those black and white photos? I thought Russia looked like that with regular cameras :P.<p>Just kidding, this has to be one of the coolest projects I've ever seen. To make all this by yourself is just ... awesome.
<p><pre><code> This was my first encounter with ITAR – the “how dare you
want interesting stuff?” restrictions. Before then I
never realized just how USA, uh…, loves the whole world.
</code></pre>
ITAR is a US regulation, and the USA doesn't have jurisdiction on a sale from a Japanese vendor to a Russian customer. You're thinking of MTCR, "an informal and voluntary partnership" between 34 countries. Both Russia and Japan are members: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Technology_Control_Regime" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Technology_Control_Reg...</a>
"..when I started there were no 3D printers. Eventually I made one, and all the clumsiness of the old rig got replaced with modern, 3D printed, well-fitted parts."<p>When I read this I thought, "nah"... but some digging later and<p><a href="http://orbides.org/page.php?id=703&lng=eng" rel="nofollow">http://orbides.org/page.php?id=703&lng=eng</a>
Great read! I'm curious about the last bit, saying you need liquid nitrogen cooling to detect the radiated heat from a human. I'd always thought some snakes have infrared-sensitive spots near their mouths that could sense mammals from a distance, are they just that much more sensitive than a photodiode? Or are they sensing something else?
Nice way to start the day ;) Can't someone send this guy a box of gently used CCDs and some wideband lenses already or maybe an old copy of labview...<p>Oh and Artem, if you happen to see this, can you try getting out of the city on a cloudless night and taking a long exposure of the night sky? Thanks for your hard work and inspiring us all!
So is the future wavelength project something like radio waves? It would be fascinating to see an image lit by radio waves. Imagine a wifi router being lit up like a lightbulb, casting shadows around a room, or a room lit by FM radio passing through walls and windows, etc.
> But for our goal it’s important to remember, because infrared light does not pass through glass<p>I thought that was UV?! If that statement is true, how on earth am I able to busk in the heat of the sun behind a glass window, indoors?
Infrared film used to be available commercially with sensitivity up to 900nm. It was quite useful for aerial photography work – forestry, surveying, spying. Very little of it is still around. Kodak Ektachrome was what one could get for your high school dark room. Aerochrome for surveying work. It was discontinued in 2009. Ilford however still makes some. Be forwarned, finding someone to develop the stuff is a nightmare, the chemicals are toxic, and the shelf-life brief.<p>Scientific infrared films, such as special formulations of AeroChrome I, II, II, approached sensitivity up to 1200nm.<p>In surveillance work, objects which were painted to look like their natural environment using various organic or inorganic paints may show up quite differently in the infrared spectrum.<p>In forestry work, old growth tree populations could easily be distinguished from new growth tree populations and were one of the primary uses for Nasa's version of the U2 (ER-2) for identifying old-growth redwood populations in northern California. [1]<p>A lot of work was done in the 1970's and '80's by astronomers and physicists to 'hack' Eastman Kodak scientific film, or plates as they were called. (Once you move past "point and shoot" film, you get into the realm of plates, 4"x5" trays similar to old-timey 1880's cameras.) Things like Kodak I-Z. One technique was to hypersensitize the film by bathing it in Ammonium Hydroxide [2]. Lawrence Livermore had such an appetite for IR-sensitive film with their laser work that they set up their own production process for hypsersentizing Kodak scientific plates. Another was to supersensitize them with acetic solutions getting film sensitivity in the >1500nm range [3]. This seems to be the limit of our knowledge for traditional chemical film processes.<p>Modern DSLR's have sensitivity up to 1600nm. Nikon worked with NASA for some of their special DSLR's [4].<p>One of the cooler things I saw was a University of Florida paper in Nature that used IR-OLED's to upconvert IR to visible light through a lens adapter achieving sensitivity from 400nm to 2000nm [5].<p>Beyond 2000nm you get into the MWIR range and FLIR devices take over.<p>[1] <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=HZUTCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT129&lpg=PT129&dq=u2+spy+plane+infrared+film&source=bl&ots=rxHraY2iqm&sig=e45ipoJHIIsy4D_huZVk3MKwBRw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_2q-a09bMAhUO_mMKHVPTA4wQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=u2%20spy%20plane%20infrared%20film&f=false" rel="nofollow">https://books.google.com/books?id=HZUTCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT129&lpg=...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/4442636/" rel="nofollow">http://www.osti.gov/scitech/servlets/purl/4442636/</a><p>[3] <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=nlftCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA259&lpg=PA259&dq=spectral+sensitization+for+i-1060v-2&source=bl&ots=pNFdp7EB9s&sig=qPC3JdbftREwOsDNtDLc5msnj-o&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiLzfb55dbMAhVS7mMKHVGaB9IQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=spectral%20sensitization%20for%20i-1060v-2&f=false" rel="nofollow">https://books.google.com/books?id=nlftCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA259&lpg=...</a><p>[4] <a href="http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Collections/NearIR/IR_Intro.htm" rel="nofollow">http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Collections/NearIR/IR_Intro.htm</a><p>[5] <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/srep05946" rel="nofollow">http://www.nature.com/articles/srep05946</a>
It is possible to see in near infrared - just use a IR filter (used for photography), and stick it to your eye. Everything should look dim and reddish, but what is characteristic (and different from a red filter) is that leaves are very bright. Also, many black t-shirts are not-dark.<p>Also, it's fun to make such photos:<p><a href="http://migdal.zenfolio.com/ir-old" rel="nofollow">http://migdal.zenfolio.com/ir-old</a>
> Heat vision. [...] MWIR is neither heat, nor is it light. It’s both<p>No, it isn't. The "infrared light is heat" statement is casually-useful but technically-false, which means it backfires and harms people when they start learning more about physics.<p>IR radiation is not the intrinsic heat-content of the matter emitting it. Infrared is simply a particular set of wavelengths which happens to be prominent for temperatures which are "hot" for us just because we evolved on this small rocky planet which has a certain baseline temperature.<p>Go ask some icy crystalline aliens or ones powered by low-grade nuclear reactions what they think about "heat radiation" and you won't get the same answer.
Have you tried zone plates instead of lenses? Feature sizes should be larger for IR than for visible light, so it's should be possible to fit enough zones to get some focusing.
Incredible dedication and a fantastic project. I wonder if a setup made from a FLiR Dev Kit, a Raspberry Pi and the Pi camera would produce similar result?
This guy is spectacular. Check out his other work: <a href="http://orbides.org/" rel="nofollow">http://orbides.org/</a> Here is a nice concept of an interstellar ship <a href="http://orbides.org/concepts.php?lng=eng" rel="nofollow">http://orbides.org/concepts.php?lng=eng</a>
Cool stuff!<p>I think that regarding the near infrared light a regular CCD element could be useful as well, as those are sensitive to infrared too. The only problem is to filter the visible light to leave the infrared spectrum only. Also be sure that the ccd doesn't have a IR filter (some does).
For 21st century Predator vision, this is the closest to it. Thermal IR from FLIR - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7URETAl75A" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7URETAl75A</a>. Someone should hack this into a pair of glasses.