Infrared LEDs make you invisible to CCTV cameras

This German exibition is showcasing bright infrared LED devices that overwhelm the CCDs in security cameras, allowing you to move through modern society in relative privacy. I used this as a gimmick in my story I, Robot -- now I want to own one!

The URA / FILOART developed device promises to the citizens of a more reliable protection against security measures of the state (and other Überwachenden).
In addition to monitoring purposes organised systems interaction between man and machine is still IR.ASC an additional interaction between machines dar. This absurd accumulation of technology is symptomatic, because although the entire expense of the protection measures for the alleged safety of citizens is made, the person slips on the importance scale of the current security plan ever deeper down.

Link (Thanks, Bill!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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DVR Dave

I was aware of this in older cameras, but I loved this article and all its responses. But I must ask, why is everyone trying to go unnoticed?
Takuan

in countries where the boot of sharia law is firmly pressed on the collective neck, a man found wearing a burkha in public is imprisoned and tortured, possibly killed.

In non-sharia countries, there is usually no law forbidding non-muslims from wearing burkhas too. This is an avenue I intend to use and keep open if survelliance becomes too oppressive in public places.
Anonymous

Ok I was thinking about this for some time. TO USE IT AGAINST SPEED CAMS!!!! Led’s around number plate surrond. Cant be seen by patrol car behind but has an effect on Mobile cams and speed trap cams.
Bennessy

Oooh! Imagine, CCCTV defeating throwies!
nex

I just came back to this post because I was looking something up, and I noticed this gem:

I know our Burle (commercial-grade) parking lot camera gets a blank spot with repeaters in it like the example image

The ‘repeaters’ are called lens flare.

when there’s too much IR. I doubt an IR LED would be bright enough, though. It’s usually a result of a direct reflection of sunlight off a car window.

Ooh, yeah, if you filtered out the IR light, surely you’d get a perfectly resolved mirror image of the sun; looking at the sun with a camera only produces a bright spot because there’s too much IR! Thanks for explaining that! So, children, next time parts of a photograph are overexposed due to reflections from the sun, just screw on an IR filter and everything will be fine … it’s not like the sun is actually, you know, bright as fuck or anything.
Bennessy

Well, according to #51, looks like it’s back to Guy Fawkes masks.
dasbin

This device is not for protection from normal visible-light CCTV cameras, most of which have infrared filters installed, but only for infrared cameras, which I think are relatively rare.
Takuan

so, a few of these in my hat?
http://www.worldstartech.com/products-ldm_uhl_series
Takuan

this in my pocket

http://www.flyonthewall.uk.com/spy-camera-jammer.htm
theclar

Reading a few comments that suggest IR can mess with digital cameras I wonder if something similar could be used by the famous to mess with the paparazzi.
Cory Doctorow

My understanding is that many CCTVs have some sensitivity into the IR in order to resolve detail in poor light conditions. The CCD in these cameras is reputed to fail when exposed to high intensity IR light sources.
Takuan

gonna build me an IR laser and fry them cameras
Jeff

Geez, and to think I do my hair nice each day just to look nice for the CCT cams!

I military terms this is old technology.
Impenetrable

Takuan, #56 and #59….that’s fine IF the camera you think you’re jamming is 1)wireless 2)operates at 2.4Ghz.

The systems we install use a roving frequency. The receiver senses a camera’s signal at setup at a particular signal strength and S/N ratio. If the receiver gets a variance from the norm, the entire system — cameras, receivers, all switch freqs immediately. It is how the system maintains itself from ‘toys’ like that you carry in your pocket, as well as interfering sources like wireless routers, wireless pool temperature systems, wireless weather systems, etc. etc. And not all our systems are 2.4Ghz so maybe you’ll want to consider buying that toy of yours in 5.8Ghz, 0.9Ghz and more.

Gadget freaks ought to know that advanced systems are conceived and built by advanced people who’ve already considered and built past the gadget freaks and hackers. Really. By the time you’ve aimed your little LED source at the camera and think you’ve swamped the detector, you’re already on film, disk, or tape for enough frames to get you in trouble. We’ve never installed a single IR camera at a site either. They’re inexpensive enough to place many….a lot more than you’ve got your jammer toys for. Stop wasting your time.
nex

For those who don’t speak German, “Ueberwachenden” is literally “hyper-attentive”, the German idiom for a smothering micro-managing personality.

No, it doesn’t mean that at all, and this idiom you speak of doesn’t exist. It is possible to read the connotation of Ã¼ber=hyper and wachend=attentive into the word, and you might get this subtlety across by making the work bold, italic, larger, and red, with a hyphen in the middle, but ordinarily ‘Ãœberwachende’ just means ‘surveillers’ and there is absolutely no connection to micro-management either way, no matter how much you try to force it.

Of course it’s right that (former) citizens of East Germany would assign an inherently negative meaning to this otherwise completely neutral term, but it’s nowhere near ‘Big Brother’ and it isn’t really a euphemism. I’ll try to explain this with an analogy: If strawberries were deadly traps to you because you are allergic, the term ‘strawberry’ wouldn’t become a euphemism just because of that (even though others connect it with pleasant connotations).
turkeymonkey

for all the people saying this won’t work, how do you know? have you tried it? most security cameras are OLD. I’ve played with IR leds, they will blot out many, many cameras. but, as said, it works best in low light conditions. so a bank that is well lit, like most, might not work so well. but you never know what works until you try it yourself. most people just read it on the internet and say, “this guys says it won’t work, good enough for me!”.
until you play, you’ll never know…
Gilbert Wham

@#23: I just figure I should swap ‘em out when I can’t change channel anymore. Am I doing it wrong?
dculberson

“absurd accumulation of technology”… I think I’ve been there. I know a couple of my friends are there.

The CCD in most cameras is IR sensitive. I know our Burle (commercial-grade) parking lot camera gets a blank spot with repeaters in it like the example image when there’s too much IR. I doubt an IR LED would be bright enough, though. It’s usually a result of a direct reflection of sunlight off a car window.
Adam Keck

This was the method by which the robbers blocked the bank’s cameras in Spike Lee’s “Inside Man.” I did not understand that scene, until I saw the effect while playing with a webcam at work.

-Adam
CitrusFreak12

I was wondering why the quoted text was a bunch of borderline nonsensical gobbledygook. Then I saw that the linked page goes through translate.google.com.
arkizzle

it’d be interesting to mount this on a baseball cap, maybe an LED under the peak to wash out the face.. and one above, on the front flat bit, to definitely max out the IR CCD on the camera.
arkizzle

..although if you used an under-powered LED, you might end up just clearly illuminating your face for the cam.. :(
Thomas J. Brown

This is the same basic idea I had about 10 years ago, but didn’t have the necessary knowledge or resources to attempt (being in high school at the time). It’s something I’ve always wanted to play with, and this is a really nice proof of concept.
Elysianartist

Anything that makes it harder for the “state” to track us. Works for me!
bardfinn

For those who don’t speak German, “Ueberwachenden” is literally “hyper-attentive”, the German idiom for a smothering micro-managing personality.
Takuan

I will be soon opening the first temple of the Holy Church of the Sacred Mask. As an adherent, you will enjoy protection in your daily mask wearing as a citizen’s basic right. We will be using muslim veils and burkhas as well as other similar religious practices as precedent for our right to go masked in public places. It is an undemanding faith, do as you like,convert others – the sole commandment is to declare yourself as a Sacred Masker on your census and other government forms.In time we wil have the same recognition as the Jedi and the $cientologists.

Perhaps the Church of the FSM will amalgamate with us.
ricket

Just point a tv remote at your laptop’s built-in camera (like an iSight, sorry Mac dude here). You can easily see the remote’s IR LED via the camera.
soubriquet

This has been a fascinating read, especially the digressions about traffic cameras and the dirty tricks the U.K. Home-Office use to move the goalposts whenever they wish.
However, back to the main point. We have cameras scattered all over our work sites. They’re there because we were getting a lot of break-ins and thefts, and because a security guard, responding to a sounding alarm was attacked and seriously injured.
Just like many other people, I’m not happy about all pervasive surveillance, and believe it to be an intrusion in public places, but believe me, if I hear a door being smashed in in the night, I’d rather be able to record and report what’s happening, and guide the police to the person hiding, (as he believes), than go out and search, in the darkness, for an armed crack-head.
Lastly, as others have said, this LED idea is just the equivalent of carrying a big banner, saying “look at me!”, Most intelligent security systems now flag anomalies as alarms. If a camera is blinded, or goes dark, then you can bet someone’s going to notice.
Far better just to look nondescript and blend in with the crowd.
Flashback

So many experts in one place.. grab a coffee it’s a long post!

I am the original inventor of the Flashback anticamera system which I sold during the early days of speed cameras in the early 90′s {Gatso MK1′s which were film cameras with doppler-shift radar modules inside). My system used profesional photographic slave-flash guns (Haminax), which fired a custom xenon strobe light straight into the perspex numberplate which had blacked out sides to trap the light in the plate. The result was that the plate was massively over-exposed and all ‘they’ got was a white sqaure. End result? Home Office broke the door down at 5am, and confiscated just about everything. Was warned not to do it again although there was nothing illegal about the product.. that was over 15 years ago. The systems also worked in daylight and was using visible white light at a colour temperature of 9500 kelvin.

In 1995 I started a security company, which was primarily selling CCTV, Access Control and Intruder Alarms. I have over 20 years of experience with cameras such as Burle, Sony, Panasonic, Vista (Norbain PLC), American Dynamics etc. Later I was asked to provide a white paper to the House of Commons on my views on Road Charging scheme they were planning to introduce. I suggested that using RFID chips stuck in vehicle license plates was the better of the two technologies.. but they voted the option out and instead went with CCTV and ANPR (Automatic number plate recognition). I advised them that this was NOT the technology to persue as it IS defeatable.. but clearlyb someone in the industry was on the payroll so CCTV was voted in. In late 2006 I started another technology company which had a decent resource budget as I have professional funding for an incar safety system. This system communicated with other vehicles which had the same system, and warned of threats. The original concept was like a modern day CB radio, in which subscribers would be part of “The motorists’ private defence network” at around Â£7 per month. The unit had onboard GPS/GPRS, and also using novel Infra Red technologies and new ground-breaking discreet components from CREE Secmiconductors; it was able to communicate using very high power IR bursts – even through thick fog to warn you that another car was braking ahead even though you could not see it. The downside was that if there was a CCTV camera present IT WOULD NOT RECORD THE NUMBER PLATE – Infact it was so powerful the camera didn’t even see the car. The largest global ANPR supplier is Pips Technology (Google that and have a read). Here in the UK, they were stupid enough to put their data sheets on their web, so by determining the type of pulse output signature (their IR light is modulated not on all the time), we can tell what type of camera they are using. So the system could detect a NEW speed camera which was not yet on the GPS camera database, and then transmit a warning to all other system users IN REAL TIME that a new camera had been discovered..

We spent Â£16,000 in legal expenses cheking that the unit was not illegal. The old law only mentioned that it was illegal to tamper with the font, spacing, reflectivity, refractivity, of a license plate etc but nothing about stopping cameras from reading it. At that time, members of the home office told us that if we sold the product, I would be arrested under the Anti-Terrorism Law 2000.. (as if a terrorist is going to use a car registered to him). We explained that there was nothing illegal about it but still the threat was made again. Ten days after that conversation, the law in the UK was changed regarding license plates – the new law states, “It is illegal to prevent a license plate from being read; by manual or electronic means”. So that covers everything in one sentence.

To the camera experts that have posted on here: In a mobile situation, the window of opportunity for an ANPR camera is normally only 50metres. Therefore at anything over 30mph or motorway speeds they only get a few frames in before the vehicle is out of range.. we pulsed our IR led arrays with a forward current of 20AMPS!!! that is so bright that the white ballance circuit has a fit and the whole scene is just over-exposed. The units were mounted on customn numberplate surrounds, you can buy them cheaply on ebay. They had copper buss-bars in them to dissapate the heat, and the IR units themselves are military grade TO66 can units (Like these but these are another make, ours did not have public data sheets – Google LED810-66-16100,). I spent Â£Â£Â£ on research, and more on prototyping. We had an ex Sony-Erikson phone company in Kuala Lumpur, Malay, banging out the clever bits, and China was doing the mass assembly of the boards etc. (Tip – never bother with patents or copyright if you send your product to china for manufacture, as to the chinese, Copyright means right to copy and your product will be on the market in china before you get it launched properly!)

Anyway, the science works when you use the right components. I cannot market it and have lost three years of my life developing it. It is not illegal to discuss, it is not illegal to fit to your vehicle (in the UK anyway) as the type approval states that any VISIBLE light emitted at the back of the vehicle must be red.. and it’s invisible at 810/940nM. BUT it is illegal to use. You can also be charged with “perverting the cause of justice” and I am sure the home office will have made up another bunch of laws to protect them.

One more thing. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES USE HIGH POWER INFRA RED ON CAPS AND CLOTHING ETC YOU WILL BLIND SOMEONE – Probably yourself.

I hope this has shed some light (sorry) on an interesting topic. I don’t mind losing as much as I have, but I wish the governements would stop trying to bull**** us when they say it’s all in the name of preventing terrorism.. it’s just mass revenue generation and they don’t want us fighting back.
securityinsider

Ha, sorry to burst your bubble here. But as a CCTV researcher, all I do all day, for a living, is test out cameras for the largest security integrator in the world. I can tell you that this may work for a second or two on cameras that have a cut filter (that’s the real name for “IR sensitive” cameras), but all that is really going to happen is your face will get illuminated in between the frames that are actually “flared” out by the light. Also, you’re more likely to be noticed doing this due to the motion detection alarms going off due to the large pixel change. You would be much better off with a laser, than an LED. We’ve been doing these type of tricks for years in the lab to try to trick the cameras. Anymore, its not the cameras you need to trick, but the intelligent video algorithms that are going to pick up on the anomaly and register it as an event. Oh, one more thing. Don’t even try to attempt this during the daytime. Like another poster said, the cut filter doesn’t activate until a timer either trips it (set on a schedule) or a preset low lux threshhold is met. (it gets dark). Even then many cameras these days have dynamic range circuits that will tame the bright spots and highlight the dark spots. Look up some Pelco, Panasonic, or Sony cctv specs for more info. Kudos for the entertainment value though. Any questions, post a comment at http://www.securityinsider.blogspot.com.
- Mowatt_m
  
  This guy sure is having fun! I suspect my neighbor (X- Army guy) is using a laser and/or IR light device to disrupt my security surveillance system. Can you confirm if this is indeed laser or IR and if it is harmful? I have young kids and am concerned over the effects of these devices. Would night time infrared glasses help to see the light?
  I was thinking on using a IR camera with just the cord attached (150ft) and try to go outside and use the camera to trace to the source of the light.
  
  The camera I am using is Chinese made and listed as:
  â€¢ 24 infra-red LEDs see in the dark up to 65ft
  â€¢ Clear resolution 480 TV Lines video display
  â€¢ Powerful Sony CCD color image sensor chip
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RATykqPUVbs
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jAiVArXvq8
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJnBNYTSeP4
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwPI67_UMqc
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq9SNCVZKsg
CS Loser

This works one of two ways: the people watching the cameras either (1) didn’t care anyway (2) have you arrested for being a terrorist for trying to subvert their security systems.

If you’re actually trying to get away with something in the view of security cameras, you’re probably better off (1) wearing the most generic possible clothes for the area with no distinguishing markings (2) wearing a hat and not looking up.

This is sort of like what most actual intelligence types say about james bond-type gadgets — “you really want to try explaining why you were carrying *that* to the secret police?”

Are you just posting this because makers have a fetish for LEDs?
flyingdutchman

The IR-LED trick will work with most cheap compact surveillance cameras. These cameras themselves often use IR-LEDs as illuminators – half a dozen or so positioned around the lens and facing in the same direction as the lens does – so they will work reasonably well in low light conditions. One or two LEDs of the same type pointed at the camera will effectively blind such a camera.
Such LEDs produce a fairly narrow beam, without external optics.

With professional grade surveillance kit tho, I doubt it will work reliably under all circumstances. At night, probably well enough to blank out the features of a person, but as mentioned by securityinsider, you’ll probably set off an alarm of some sort, with the likely result of the local rent-a-cop goon squad swooping down on you.

As far as motorcycle helmets go:
In Italy as in most European countries, wearing a helmet is compulsory for motorcycle and moped riders. A few months after this law was introduced, a kid went into a tobacconist’s in a bit of a hurry and forgot to take his helmet off. The shopkeeper panicked and unloaded both barrels of his 16 gauge into the kid’s chest. You can imagine the result.
Takuan

@57

this is a good one
http://www.instructables.com/id/Super-Nightvision-Headset-Hack/
jccalhoun

Is this similar to a technique that they have at least talked about using to prevent pirates from camcordering films? Have the movie full of bursts of IR and then the videorecorder just picks up irritating white flashes.
dacker

Let’s not forget that CCDs with extended sensitivity into the IR wavelengths are not the only game in town for nighttime security. There also exists security cameras which use thermal imaging. They require no illumination whatsoever and would completely ignore the IR LED setup shown here.
Michael

Actually, “Ãœberwachenden” just means “people monitoring”. “Ãœberwache” may have that idiomatic meaning. If so, I’ve never heard it, but since most of my work is technical translation, I don’t get a lot of idiom.

But the text really just mean, “the government (or other people monitoring)”. Less poetic, I suppose.
Xenu

There was something like this at SIGGRAPH last summer. A series of infared LEDs scrolled messages across a black monolith. You could only see the message by pulling out your camera (cell phone camers worked fine) and watching it on your screen.

But the LEDs certainly weren’t bright enough to overwhelm the camera.
Takuan

lens less spectacle frames studded with IR LEDs perhaps. The headband is nice idea since there are places like banks that essentially require hats to be removed. The legal challenges will be interesting. If you are going about your lawful ocassions in a public place and are jamming surrveiliance CCTV but not actually doing anything specifically illegal (yet),what are they going to arrest you on to get their test case?

With facial recognition tech getting sophisticated,I would be interested to see what is available to alter the planes and main features of your face without resorting to overt masking (which usually is publically illegal) Some sort o easy to use prosthetics perhaps.
a_caspis

Hmm, this thing could be dangerous. Any cheap IR LED bright enough to saturate a camera at a distance can probably burn a hole in someone’s retina, especially if worn at head level.

To avoid this, you would need to produce IR light at 1500 nm or more – these wavelengths will heat the skin and cornea, but will not penetrate the eye. Unfortunately, I doubt such IR sources are available in LED form factor.

By the way, for the same reason, the IR illuminators in surveillance cameras normally use a wavelength of 1500+ nm. So, the LED trick could be easily defeated by adding a filter that blocks any wavelength below, say, 1000 nm.
Purly

This just makes me want cat-eye LED rimmed glasses.
arkizzle

#13
You have to take your hat off in banks? I’ve heard of full-face motorbike helmets having to be removed.. but baseball caps?

Where is this, in America?
Kevin

I thought of the baseball cap IR approach a couple of years ago. Tried it out with a bunch of cheap LEDs, and couldn’t get enough light to wash out facial features.

Maybe it would work better if you wore makeup that is highly reflective in short wavelengths?

Alternately, just get one of these (http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.4791) baseball cap clip-on illuminators and swap out the LEDs for IR LEDs.
rikchik

The images from the cameras are eerily similar to the “Laughing Man” from the “Ghost in the Shell: SAC” anime series.
Myshkin1984

What if one were to replace the little light that illuminates one’s license plate with some high-powered IR LEDs. Goodbye traffic violations recorded via cameras! Now speed through that red light! (this all of course assuming that your car has little lights to illuminate your license plate)
Anonymous

all digital cameras are sensitive to IR light inc your phone cameras you can test this by pointing your tv remote at it and pressing some buttons.. you will not see it your camera will !

if the IR leds are pointing where the camera is looking they will act like torches for the cams in pure darkness.

asto
“dculberson
I doubt an IR LED would be bright enough, though. It’s usually a result of a direct reflection of sunlight off a car window.”

yes you can get high brightness IR leds that run on 3volt (2AA)
as for the sunlight off the car window.. that not IR on its own
its just the same light that blinds us.

IR is a very pure light sorce for very little energy.
JacobDavis

Just about every digital camera under the sun, still or video, is more or less sensitive to the light spectrum immediately outside the human-visible range. You could pull the same trick with a UV light, too. I use IR leds frequently in photography just for this reason.
noen

I have to agree with #10 CSLoser. If the goal is to not be tracked then being the one in the crowd wearing the camera defeating LED isn’t thinking all the way through. If the goal is to commit a crime well then… maybe. But your goose is cooked if there is one camera that isn’t IR sensitive.

This is simply the wrong way to go about all this. The right way is to get these sick f*cks out and put some sanity back into the government. Start putting some accountability and transparency back in too. Get us out of Iraq, end torture and start putting these sociopaths in prison for war crimes.

Yes we can.
Dan Tentler

i wannit!

I think it would be a good idea to make a jacket with those lights peppered all over. It would take more power, but thats just perfect for, say, making the back of the jacket a giant solar panel! :D
Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Moderator

CS Loser (10), I take it that means visual anonymity is an option for you.
Domomojo

@#23 cool! Thanks for sharing this trick.
hellhead

Great now people can rob banks in total anonymity. If only that guy that looked like snake eyes were to have this. They’d be hunting a light bulb instead.
MOONBAT

You might want to test your own cameras. This would make smash-and-grab robberies foolproof.
XR

@Myshkin1984 (#36)

Traffic cams cant/dont use IR. Most have a regular speed flash and standard or low lux, highspeed photo camera.

IR cameras have an especially hard time with license plates because in the US plates have a reflective coating that VERY EFFICIENTLY reflects light, and in the case of IR light if you look at a license plate with an IR camera, you see a big white block.

SO this wont help you avoid that traffic ticket. The effects of this exploit are really most effective on IR sensitive surveillance cameras. While some other cameras have some IR sensitivity, they arent nearly as sensitive as cameras designed to see in the IR spectrum like IR surveillance cams.

Also, having IR illuminators all over your stuff may well make you stand out in other ways, say if a police officer has a nightvision unit in his vehicle. So I’d suggest avoiding that unless you want to call attention to yourself.
Takuan

just use a piece of vinyl electrician’s tape of the right colour to alter a couple of characters on the plate
devans22

Big brother aside, I can make a diy night goggle with a camcorder and uv led flashlight?

My wife bought a new car with a camera back up assist to make up for a huge blind spot in the rear window. I also need to make a beacon so she can back into our featureless driveway. FUN!
hellhead

I don’t need one of these, I just take my TV remote with me and point it at every camera I see while I walk by.
dmatos

Here’s what’s happening:

Most digital cameras will have a filter that will cut off long-wavelength IR light. However, since light is a continuous spectrum, and filters do not have perfect cut-off, some IR light, just barely outside of the visible range, gets through to the sensor.

The sensor itself is covered with absorption filters in a Bayer pattern, making different pixels sensitive to red, green, and blue light. However, these filters are often transmissive to IR light (they’re only designed to filter visible wavelengths). Thus, every pixel thinks that it’s receiving light of the colour that it’s tuned to, even though it’s just IR. That’s why images overloaded with IR will appear white – all colours of pixels get saturated.

This will work for most visible-light cameras (as long as the IR LED is bright enough to saturate pixels after going through the cut-off filter and the bandpass colour filter), as well as for thermal cameras (which, of course, are designed to detect IR radiation).

Aim your digital camera at your TV remote, and watch the live viewscreen on the back while pressing the buttons on the remote. Do you see white? That’s the remote’s IR signal. I use this trick to see if my remote batteries are dying.
gimpols1908

In a past life (college – 12 ys ago) when i worked at radio shack that is how we would test to see if a remote for a tv was working. Aim at the video camera and press a button. Try it with any digital camera. Unless it has a UV filter on it you get a blinking white spot.
Slippy Lane

Hehe, I reckon you should claim due props for that one, Cory!

After reading your aforementioned story a wee while back, I immediately started searching for ultra-bright IR LED’s to replicate the effect for myself.
tunni56

Hi Flashback. I think I spoke to you (or a collegue perhaps)and saw a very impressive demo of ‘flasback’ at motorcycle show in London about 10 yrs ago? I think it was at the old London Arena docklands. I’ve been trying to buy one of those systems ever since and am still looking for one!!!! Reading your post I now know why you stopped selling them!

Has speed camera tehnology changed now so that the old ‘flashback’ would no longer work? If they still work do you know where I might source one from? ..or do you have a circuit diagram? OR is there any system out there somewhere that defeats speed cameras, I’d love to know

Tunni
tunni07@googlemail.com
CapnMarrrrk

I suppose I should just stick to the Guy Fawkes mask.
Maurik

@21 Moonbat

Except for the fact that Governments all over the world have DNA libraries and fingerprint libraries.

Unless they have an LED that can cover our DNA!
bardfinn

Michael: I remember it from my high-school German classes, with my former-East-German immigrant German teacher. He intimated that the term was uncomplimentary and was a euphemism during the Cold War ala “Big Brother”. His use may have been entirely regional.
delt664

Could someone explain how non-visible IR light can blind people?

My extensive research (30 seconds on Google) didn’t return much information other than Yahoo Answers, which is possibly the worst source of information in the universe,
XR

I’m a technician for a company that distributes surveillance cameras and related equipment, and I can state for fact the following:

1) This WILL work against IR cameras or standard cameras equipped with appropriate filters to allow them to see IR.

CAVEAT: In most cases, such cameras do not become IR sensitive until natural light levels drop below a certain threshold (LUX level). Once the natural/ambient light reaches the critical threshold (say .01 LUX ) the IR illuminators, IR sensitivity mode/filter kick in, and it starts to see it. Otherwise, most cant see IR, such as during the day.

2) Non-IR cameras, and those not equipped with appropriate filters, will not see or react negatively to this type of “attack”. We have a ton of demo cameras hanging in our shop, and non-IR cams have IR cams with built in illuminators pointing directly at them from the other side of the room, and do not show any effect (positive or negative) from the rather intense IR light being directed at them.

Further, if this is something you want to do, you can pick up the necessary components from places like Radio Shack or order from Jamecofor pretty cheap and make your own magic camera death-ray. Don’t waste your time/cash on this thing.
Moon

IIRC, ATM hackers used to use IR on the cameras on the ATMs so that they couldn’t be identified when they hacked the ATM.
Roy Trumbull

There was a product made by 3M that was in the form of a screen that reflected light only on axis. Thus a talent working in front of a screen with a projection on it would appear to be in the image and studio lights wouldn’t wash it out. Often wondered what became of that product.
There is a very old circuit called a relaxation oscillator. It is what drives the blinking light in a smoke detector while drawing little battery current. Wonder how that would work with an LED?
Drew from Zhrodague

I’m another of those that thought of this idea, but did not put it together for whatever reason (me = broke).

However, I did get some samples of white LEDs — 3 watt units, that come in their own heatsinks. I wondered if it would be possible to do what these people are doing, but by using these high-powered ir LEDs. So I asked someone about the brightness.

I was told that the intensity of the light, and the tiny emitter, might actually harm the eyes, especially if you’re conversing with someone and have this turned on. So, probably a bad idea, but a very good way to prevent cameras from recording your face.

For a really bad idea, try this with high-powered UV LEDs.
cunyat

This works with radar’s cam?
manicbassman

strange how you have to remove a motorbike helmet when you enter a bank, yet a burka wearing muslim woman is allowed to keep her burka on…