John Irvin Turns a Fistful of Off-the-Shelf Parts Into a Raspberry Pi-Powered Night Vision Camera

YouTuber John Irvin has turned a compact Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ and a selection of off-the-shelf parts into a fully-portable night vision camera — housed in a custom-made 3D-printed case.

"I'm making a night vision camera using a Raspberry Pi," Irvin explains of his project, brought to our attention by Adafruit. "This is a Raspberry Pi 3 [Model] A+ — it's older but it's also smaller, so it'll be able to make the build a little bit smaller than [with] the Raspberry Pi 4 [Model] B 'cos it has all these [extra] ports. I'm [also] using the Raspberry Pi new Camera Module 3 — this is the No-IR one so that I can see in the dark."

The No-IR variants of the Raspberry Pi Camera Module lack the infrared filter of the standard versions, which can result in odd colors when used in well-lit environments — but which allows the camera to pick up infrared light invisible to the human eye, meaning it can peer into the darkness without blinding passers-by.

For that to work, though, you need a light source. In Irvin's case, that's a low-cost infrared camera lamp using an array of surface-mount LEDs — an off-the-shelf part, in common with all the other parts of the build including a display panel and a battery pack which powers everything for on-the-go night vision photography and videography.

Irvin has released a video demonstrating an initial prototype version of the camera which uses an infrared flashlight and an oversized battery — both of which, the maker says, were replaced in a second iteration to both improve the quality of the camera's night vision capabilities and to reduce the weight of the finished build.

Full build details are available in the above YouTube video, while Irvin has released STL files for the housing on Thingiverse under the reciprocal Creative Commons Attribtion-ShareAlike license.