Infrared Light Goggles: Raspberry Pi Project

Infrared Cameras are used in a wide variety of applications from Security to Scientific Study. Unlike traditional cameras, which perceive light similar to the human eye, an Infrared Light camera can 'see' light which is not visible to the human eye. I will use this feature to illuminate a darkened room without disturbing anyone else by building a completely self-contained set of Infrared Light Goggles.

To construct this there are a few pieces of hardware I needed. First, I sourced a Raspberry Pi B+ from a previous prototyping project. Then I needed a Camera. I opted for one with the IR filter already removed, but there are tutorials on how to do it with other types of camera at home.

The camera is available under the part name Raspberry Pi NoIR camera for around $20.00.  The model I bought came with two IR LEDs each of which is attached to a photo-resistor to detect ambient light levels in the area. When the light drops too low for the camera to function, the IR LEDs are turned on. This is the same type of light used by most Television remote controls to beam commands across the room to the receiver. So if you want to add more light to the setup this is a good place to scrap IR LEDs from.

After the Main board and camera came the screen setup. The Pi camera board is a low-level peripheral which makes the latency very low on the hardware. Unfortunately trying to stream the hardware across a network was introducing to much lag to be useful in Goggles. I ultimately went with a 5" LCD available online for $25.00. The price was good but the part is a clone from a suspect company who pushes their OS and wont support the driver installation on existing OSes. Still, I managed to get it working on my existing build to a satisfactory level. The touch function doesn't work but I didn't plan to use it anyway.

Finally, the case to hold it all is an Art+Vision VR headset. The original design was to hold a cell phone to create a cheap but passable VR experience. Currently, the only Raspberry Pi module that suports Stereoscopic vision is the Pi Compute module, which i don't have access to for this project. This meant modifying the headset to accommodate the screen instead of a cell phone and removing the plastic deviser meant to help image separation. This resulted in a nice clean view of the screen.

The quality of the HD camera and display are fairly high. The latency is low enough that you can walk with the headset on without bumping into things (although depth perception takes a little practice without stereoscopic vision).

 The final image was captured while wearing the goggles in a darkened room.

The whole setup is powered by a portable recharger which has an output of 5v@2.1a which allows me to run it continuously for almost 2 hrs off a single charge. Other features I have written up for the goggles include:

• Digital zoom
• Brightness/Contrast controls
• Heads-Up-Display overlay
• Filter and Exposure controls
• Display from Sensors (Temp, GPS, etc.)
• Preview window shrink/expand controls (for eye comfort)
• Record images and Video. 
• Stream video feed to secondary server.

The total cost for building this unit was ~$100.00 if I had to purchase all the parts new. The time it took to modify the pieces and to code the interface for the PiCamera module was less than 2 days. So, for a small investment in time and money, I have prototyped a fairly feature-packed pair of IRGs.