FRYING a camcorder

I have a very paranoid and misguided neighbor who thinks I've been throwing stuff into his backyard as revenge for his dogs which bark nearly 24/7 (it's a long, sordid story, but I'm trying to keep it brief here).

Anyway, because I had the audacity to compain to him about it, he assumes its me. I've told him and my building manager he's wrong, but obviously he doesn't believe me.

How do I know? My neighbor spotted TWO VIDEO CAMERAS in his yard, clearly aimed at my balcony! I live in a two story apartment complex (I'm on the second floor) and he owns a house right behind us (his yard faces my side of the building).

The cameras are near the edge of his yard closest to our building, but a very high fence and dense foliage would make it impossible for someone to "accidentally" knock them over.

But a laser, on the other hand, would have no trouble reaching them

From my balcony I have a very clear view of them, both are about 35 feet away.

My arsenal? I've got a 180mw green, and the Wicked 1W Arctic (although we all know it's probably closer to 750mw, but still very strong).

What sort of damage would a laser hitting the lens of these things do? I think they are night vision cameras, since I can clearly see the ring of LEDs around the lens, which are generally infa-red.

Would the cameras have to be on and recording for the lasers to do any damage? In a perfect world, the intensity of the laser would fry the image sensor, especially if they are set to an infa-red mode (making them highly sensitive to even dim light).

Frankly, I don't care if I do manage to fry his cameras and he knows it was me - what's he going to do, complain to the police that I knocked out the cameras he was using to illicitly video tape me?

I'm open to any and all comments and suggestions!

Search, was discussed before ..

Really? Ok. I'll look. Never would have expected something like this to have come up before!

Why fry them? Do you need to damage his property? Why not get a 10mw greenie module on a tripod, aim the things into the aperture, and then simply blind the cameras? No harm done - he just can't see you anymore.

You can also try IR spot beams and IR lasers if you want your blinding technique to be less obvious. :evil:

Why fry the camera? Because I don't want to have to deal with wondering if I'm being filmed every time I go onto my balcony. Sorry dude but I have no sympathy for someone's camera equipment if he's using it to secretly film me.

Would YOU? I find it odd that someone would think I should be mindful of not harming his gear. I'm usually a very normal, pleasant guy but this guy seriously crossed a line. No more Mr. Nice Guy!

The infa red spots or lasers is a good idea, but there are two problems:

- It's just a guess that he's shooting infa red. Certainly in daylight he's not
- I'm not going to spend money on new equipment just to deal with a jackass, especially when I already have some powerful lasers at hand

The threads I saw so far about frying cameras mostly involved very powerful lasers being very close to the camera lens. I'm sure if his camera is on when I shine the laser into it the video will be temporarily blinded, but I'd like to permanently disable them.

I also haven't found an answer yet if my laser will do any damage if the camera is off when I shine a laser into it. Burning some damage into the lens is possible, but the image will still be quite visible and I don't think I'll be able to burn the lens from 30 feet away with a 1w laser!

Either his pointing cameras at you are illegal where you live at, in which case call police. Or it is not, in which case he will call police after whatever you do to his cameras, or after you point high power lasers on his property. Lasers wont do you any good in.

Save the lasers for light shows. Get some "dollar store pump cannon" water guns and short those cams out!

Either way, it's not illegal to "act a fool" with water guns. It is to do so with lasers!

Oh... and I use fireworks to shut up the neighbor's dogs.

Ha! A water canon! Seriously that is an awesome idea, I was thinking about a BB gun but I never would have gone even lower tech as a water gun.

And good point about the overall legality of shining lasers around, I hadn't considered that. Although considering that this guy is a bit of a redneck, I highly doubt he would go to the police to complain that his spy cameras got toasted by the guy he was spying on!

Tomorrow, it's Super Soaker time! I sure hope he's recording when the steam hits.

I took pics of the cameras facing me, I'll post them later on.

Water isn't as conductive as the movies would have you think it is. The cameras operate on low voltage which makes them pretty much impervious to tap water. Or do you plan on dousing them hourly and waiting for them to rust?

That's fucked man, Can't believe someone would get that low to putting cameras watching your every move, I love your idea, I would so be doing it. But yeah, Probz won't sit well with the Po Po's.

Aren't outdoor cameras pretty resilient to water? Why not set up a couple "dummy" cameras of your own? The whole - tasting your own medicine scheme?

If you do have something on the order of 600mws, I should think that a tripod aimed laser could easily damage the ccd, but not to where it is completely disabled, just "pixel scratched".

But seriously, anything else should be able to blind the cameras as long as the lasers are on and flooding the lens with that intense amount of light.

I suggested IR because lots of cameras accept 800-900nm NIR into the aperture even without being set to some kind of IR mode.

In which case a panel of IR leds could flashblind a camera from a reasonable distance.

if you want to stoop to vandelism it would cheaper and far more affective to sneak over and spray paint the lenses. done. Or put sugar water in your super soaker and squirt the lenses, once the sun evaporates the water there will be a nice sugar glaze on the lense destroying the visibility. Don't advertise your high power lasers by using them irresponsibly. one of the first rules I learned with lasers is not to shine them at reflective surfaces... like a camera lense. Sugar water never hurt anyone.

He can video you all he wants it's not illegal in the US. But audio is. Some old wire tapping law still holds true today. Now if you use your lasers to destroy his cameras you will loose your lasers and get fined or arrested. Like others have said just get some IR leds and point them at the cameras then let them run 24/7. Problem solved.

If you want to do it the electrical engineer's way, you would build an x-y mirror tilting stage which can track the sun over the course of a day, and redirect the rays straight over to the cameras... basically placing the sun where you want.

Going over the top here makes the court case more interesting for your lawyer.

Meatball said:

If you want to do it the electrical engineer's way, you would build an x-y mirror tilting stage which can track the sun over the course of a day, and redirect the rays straight over to the cameras... basically placing the sun where you want.

Going over the top here makes the court case more interesting for your lawyer.

Click to expand...

Best idea ever:eg:

Ok, here are the two cameras aimed at my balcony. The first one shows how far they are (the overexposed thing in the lower left is the edge of my balcony) and the second image is obviously a closer look!





Upon closer examination these are clearly head units that contain the lens, with cables that go off to wherever the image capture is taking place (either a tape unit or, more likely, a PC recording both streams. I'm guessing they are probably part of a security camera system which might use motion detection to start recording (he probably has them zoomed in on only my balcony, so they will only detect motion if I go out on the balcony.

JUst for fun, I should start throwing water balloons in no particular direction.

The idea of firing something other than just water from the gun makes sense as these cameras may very well be waterproof.

Urine? Or anything else that dries stiff and nasty (DON'T say it).