So we have a video camera trained on Connor's crib that feeds to every TV in the house on channel 3, an X10 camera to be exact that is black and white and supposed to be low light. However, it's low light level performance leaves something to be desired (translation: sucks).

Now its maybe not so well known, but most camera's can see IR on some level. Some better than others, but usually at least a bit. For example if you take a TV remote and hold it up to a digital camera and push a button, you sould see a pulsing flash....or if you feel so inclined try pointing it at your Wii sensor bar next time it's on. What you are seeing is Infrared being transmitted.

So I thought I'd buy an Infrared Illuminator, but they are super freakin' expensive. Well not to expensive, but still $50 bucks for one with only 20 LED's. I knew I could do better than that. So I looked around and found a kit online I could make sold by a gentleman named Dale Wheat. I bought it from BG Micro, but he's got a pretty good site. Anyways moving on, so I got the kit in the mail and sat down to start putting it together. It's been a while since I've done some serious soldering, so I really enjoyed dusting off my skills and seeing if I could burn myself again :) About 45 minutes later I was all done and crossing my fingers that it would work on the first shot. There were 36 Leds, so I was a little concerned about any polarities I might have mixed up, but I had taken my time.

So I hooked up 12v DC @ 150mA and hoped for the best. I used my Pentax camera to make sure they were working (remember, Infrared is invisible to the human eye) and at first saw nothing. Upon closer inspection I saw a faint purple like glow, it then occured to me that the Pentax might have an IR filter on it that was super strict so I tried my cell phone camera with much greater success. Pleased with myself I took the assembly upstairs to Connor's room, place in in front of the camera, plugged it in, and then walked to the tv to bask in my success.

I saw jack squat

I tried different power supplies, eventually hooking it up to my "tank" (which is a 12v 30amp power supply). Still nothing....then something I had read before popped into my mind..IR filters. I did some more research and came across the website I remembered reading in the past. It was about how to change webcams into IR cameras....of course I was only interested in removing the filter, but the concept was the same. So I decided it was time to tear an x10 camera apart for the greater good.

The x10 camera was easy enough to take apart, you don't even need a screwdriver....just unscrew the lens by hand (which is also how you focus it) until it pops out in your hand.

The infrared filter is a little square inside this assembly, but the hard part is getting to it. There is no way short of using a dremel to carve around the assembly. As you can see in the pic below, you need to just chop it off about 2 millimeters below the start and be careful.

See the little square inside there? Kinda has a reddish hue to it? That's the infrared filter....you know the thing that removes infrared (which we want) from the camera. Simply at this point take it out and try your best to get the whole thing back together. I didn't have any luck with superglue, the plastic doesn't seem to bond. So I ended up melting it back together and re-assembling it. After that I had to file it a bit and trim it up with a razor blade to make it screw back into the housing far enough to get a good focus. Once that was all done I waited for dark...

When it was finally dark out I plugged in the IR illuminator and BAM! Super freakin' what the hell bright. Lit the whole area up like a spot light, but it's completely invisible to the human eye. Makes you wonder why they don't just make these so people can remove them, especially in something that's supposed to be a "low light" camera.