Captain Intrigue here.
It's dark and this is the only light i have so it's time to build some night vision goggles.
It's actually really easy to build night vision goggles, but it's hard to build night vision
goggles that look cool.in fact most nightvision systems are really bulky and pretty much look
terrible.
Even top of the line military night vision gear is heavy, bulky, very awkward, and uncomfortable
to wear on your head.
So my plan is not to make the best quality nightvision glasses, my goal is to make a
set of nightvision glasses that are low profile, lightweight, comfortable to wear, with decent
ability to see in the dark.
So this is a helmet from one of my previous suits about 10 years ago.
It has a pair of LCD glasses built into the eyes along with a wide angle night vision
camera mounted on the side.
The LCD glasses basically are miniature video monitors mounted in front of your eyes and
they can be fed a video signal to display on the screen from the night vision camera.
And the night vision camera can see in the dark because it has an array of infrared LEDS
built into it right around here.
The LED lights are invisible to the naked eye but the camera can see them and they're
the same infrared LEDS used in your TV remote control.
So this helmet actually worked pretty good.
I'll be using the same basic idea in the new night vision goggles.
And for the new ones my plan is to hook up a low light camera to a pair of LCD glasses
here.
Once that's done all we really need to do is add some infrared LEDS and we have instant
night vision.
This is the camera.
So there's quite a few benefits to doing it this way.
First is that we can overlay text and graphics onto the LCD screens such as weapons status
indicators, power levels, etc. and then we have a simple heads up display (HUD) in the
goggles.
Second we have the option of later hooking up a thermal imaging camera in the future
so we can see heat signatures.
So that will probably happen in the next suit.
Third we can link these glasses to a drone with an onboard camera and see whatever the
drone sees, and that's actually one of my plans for the next suit also is to build a
reconnaissance drone so this will be the first step for that.
And the last benefit to doing it this way is that i can eventually split the two video
screens and use two separate cameras to create stereoscopic night vision which would double
the resolution to 1280 x 480.
So these LCD glasses that i'm going to be using have a resolution of 640 x 480 which
is actually pretty good for $100 but the biggest problem with these glasses is that they don't
fit right.
They're ridiculously uncomfortable so i'll have to 3d print some custom parts to change
that and make them fit better.
So now lets take a look at some CAD.
Okay here's the design for the night vision goggles.
I built this framework to essentially hold the LCD glasses in place.
The framework has two ledges on the inside where i'll attach strips of foam padding here,
here and here.
And that will make it so it's much more comfortable to wear.
On the front there are 6 jumbo 10mm infrared LEDS right here.
And they will shine the infrared light and help the camera to see in the dark.
This spot here's where the miniature video camera will be mounted.
This entire top clip is removable so that i can access all the wiring inside.
And the power wires will come through and out this little hole here and tie into the
rest of the suit.
And that's it, so let's start printing the parts now.
Alright here are all the parts for making the night vision goggles.
These are all the 3d printed parts here ready to be assembled.
Here is the framework all put together and ready to go and the next step will be to mount
the LCD glasses into it.
This is how it looks when it's clipped into the framework.
Next i'm mounting the infrared LEDS.
This is what it looks like when the LEDS are all put into place.
The next step will be to bend those leads over so they're connected in series and then
we'll solder them together.
So now i've bent the leads over and connected them in series, there's two separate sets
and each set is in series and then those two separate sets will actually be wired in parallel.
Here i am connecting the positive wire to the positive LED lead and i'm hooking the
other positive LED lead up as well.
Now i'll do the same with the negative, i'll hook the negative to each of the negative
of each LED cluster.
Okay now both arrays of LEDS's are all wired up in series parallel and they're powered
by 5vdc.
And you can see the wires coming out of the framework.
Here i'm installing the adhesive backed foam strips.
These foam strips will make it a lot more comfortable to wear the goggles and that part
will be pushing up against your face so you want it to be soft and padded.
Okay all the adhesive foam strips have now been put into place and now i'm peeling off
the protective stickers from the LCD screens.
Alright so here is the night vision camera.
In the very center is the actual camera and then around it is a cluster of infrared LED's.
So these LED's will shine an invisible infrared light which only the camera can pick up and
it will allow you to see in complete darkness.
Here i am cutting the clip off the back of the night vision camera and this is so it
can mount into the 3d printed part that i made.
Now i'm going to mount the night vision camera to the rest of the goggles.
Here i'm installing a micro usb which supplies 5v to the LCD glasses.
Alright so here's how it looks at this point, now we have to finish the wiring.
Here i'm cutting the cable from the LCD goggles and i'm going to strip it and we're going
to splice into the video feed for the goggles then we're going to connect the video feed
from the goggles to the video feed of the camera.
Here i'm connecting the video wire from the camera to the video wire of the LCD glasses.
Here i'm putting a few tie wraps around the wiring bundle and taping it good and that
will help protect it and give it a little bit of strain relief so the wires don't get
pulled and have tension on them.
Here i'm preparing the wires for soldering, i'm tinning them and then i'm going to connect
the red and black power wires to these red and black junction points.
I should also mention at this point that everything is wired up to run on 5vdc, that includes
the LCD glasses, the night vision camera, and the cluster of LED's.
Here i'm installing heat shrink tubing on all the electrical connections, you could
use heat shrink tubing or just black electrical tape would work.
And that's it, goggles are now completely finished and we're ready to test it out and
see how the night vision works.
Okay these are the night vision goggles and i've attached a digital video recorder so
i can recored video and audio during the test.
And they just slip on like norma ski goggles.
And if i don't want to wear them i can just flip them up on my head.
And that's it, ready for testing.
Okay here's the view directly from the night vision goggles in daylight.
Now i'm out in the woods testing the goggles, they seem to be working pretty good.
This is actually a direct feed from the night vision camera that your seeing.
There is a bit of graininess mostly because the infrared LED's only have an effective
range of about 20 feet.
I can improve that later by adding brighter LED's to the suit.
Oh and it's really dark out here by the way.
Without the night vision goggles there's no way that i could see where i was going.
It's actually a little disorienting to walk while wearing these things but i can manage.
I'm also recording audio directly from the night vision camera.
Hmmm...
I heard a really weird sound over there.
(Girl screams)
What the...?
Help me!