What are these REALLY? "Ir vision" glasses

While looking for real Night Vision goggles I stumbled on these and the pictures amuse me, if they really do somehow shift the spectrum to let you see IR (even if it does require lots of light) they'd be a really fun toy, and a reasonable price IMO if tehy really do work.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...tToStoreCat&refwidgettype=cross_promot_widget

Ashton --

SCAM !!!  Some people have some sensitivity in their eysight to "nerarIR" but it is overwhelmed by what we call visable light.  These glasses block out a bunch of visable light so the eye can see a little of this IR.  It won't let you see through clothing..  Body temp is too cold for human vision.  
To see the body, you need a sensor cooled to LN2 temps and don't use these toys for laser glasses.

Mike

I assumed as much (or that they were like the old "3D" goggles that somehow made certain colors 'pop' while others receeded (I dont mean the red/blue, the ones I'm thinking of were clear)) IF they were $10 I'd still get them, just for sh**s and giggles, but not worth the cost for soemthing that's THAT ineffective. and I wasn't thinking of looking at ppl naked... around here, that is the LAST thing I want to do! (most ppl here are probably 200+ lbs.....)

thanks, you saved me some money I can instead spend on more laser batteries! lol

Hemlock Mike said:

Ashton --

SCAM !!! Some people have some sensitivity in their eysight to "nerarIR" but it is overwhelmed by what we call visable light. These glasses block out a bunch of visable light so the eye can see a little of this IR. It won't let you see through clothing.. Body temp is too cold for human vision.
To see the body, you need a sensor cooled to LN2 temps and don't use these toys for laser glasses.

Mike

Click to expand...

Actually, you can sometimes see through some clothing in near infrared. In particular, some bikinis are somewhat transparent in IR. But yes, I guess those glasses are pretty much useless. Also, any cheap sunglasses are probably just as good as those glasses, because many cheap sunglasses are transparent in IR. And it's not safe for your eyes anyway, in case you can see some IR, it's maybe about 1% of what's hitting your eyes, so you're like walking around in a sunny day without sunglasses AND with your pupils dilated.

hahaha how many times has this come up on this forum???? alot! as mike said, simply, SCAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There's a metacafe vid someone posted here on this. You can make your own NIR goggles for much cheaper. Take a pair of welding goggles with removable lenses, and you sandwich in two thin plastic theatrical stage lighting gels, a very deep red and a very deep blue.

You remove the dark welding lenses, use them as a pattern to cut circles out of the theatrical gels and put them in the welding goggles. They work by blocking almost all visible light, the red cuts out all the green blue and violet, high wavelengths, and the blue filter cuts out all the yellow orange and red. However, the theatrical gels are still moderately transparent in near IR. The human eye has a teeny bit of sensitivity to near-IR (varies from person to person though...), and when you put the goggles on, you'll see sort of a weird contrasty image of the world, kind of like a purple-reddish version of what the night-shot camcorders will show you in green. The purple will be what little visible light is making it through the stacked red and blue gels, and the dull red will be the Near-IR.

You can see through some thin gauzy fabrics because the long wavelength of NIR can pass right through the weave, and other weird effects like things that are dark in the visible spectrum might be bright in NIR, and things that are bright white in visible might be darker in NIR.

Think of TV shows where they use night-shot, someone with a black shirt and white pants under daylight might look like a bright light green shirt, and dark green pants under the NIR=Green night-shot camcorder mode.

The glasses aren't a total scam, they probably do work a little bit, but at that price they're still almost a 99.9% scam. And since the eye's sensitivity to NIR is so miniscule, you really need something that blocks out all extraneous light like those welding goggles in the Metacafe video. With those e-bay glasses you'll probably see a faint weird shimmer on things, like when you wear the red-blue 3D glasses around the house and things sort of look light and dark at the same time, but ambient light leaking in from the sides will mostly wash it out. Besides the outrageous price, the scam part is where they call these glasses "THERMAL". NIR is not thermal IR, which is much, much deeper into the spectrum. NIR, is just regular light, just a teeny bit beyond red. Just like how near UV is just a teeny bit past violet.

You can also get a similar effect if you bust out the dark purple plastic windows from TV remotes that cover the NIR LED's and look through them.

Hemlock Mike said:

Ashton --

SCAM !!!  Some people have some sensitivity in their eysight to "nerarIR" but it is overwhelmed by what we call visable light.  These glasses block out a bunch of visable light so the eye can see a little of this IR.  It won't let you see through clothing..  Body temp is too cold for human vision.  
To see the body, you need a sensor cooled to LN2 temps and don't use these toys for laser glasses.

Mike

Click to expand...

LN2 temps? remind me what they are?

i wonder how much power a peltier device would take (and how cold it would get) before it becomes useable for this application - oh and also immoveable - then again, there's the IR sensors and to get a resolution any higher than 320x240 you're paying $$$$$$$....

it's a department where if you don't know how much it is, you can't afford it!

dynamicvelocity said:

LN2 temps? remind me what they are?

i wonder how much power a peltier device would take (and how cold it would get) before it becomes useable for this application - oh and also immoveable - then again, there's the IR sensors and to get a resolution any higher than 320x240 you're paying $$$$$$$....

it's a department where if you don't know how much it is, you can't afford it!

Click to expand...

LN2 is liquid nitrogen - and peltiers get less efficient as temperatures go down so u get exponentially increasing power consumption for going to lower temperatures, in other words TECs are not feasable. and most thermal imaging cameras don't need to be cooled like that although they are very expensive.

i have a pair of these...they do work as advertised, but they are wayyy over priced.
Look on metacafe on how to make your own.
add a red filter, and you will have a more pure Ir goggle

scam, yes.
half part of "seeing IR with normal eyesight" is a filter that blocks everything but IR, the other part is greatly enhanced eye-sensitivity on *all* wavelengths by dilated pupils and scotopic vision (aka "night-vision"), which comes from blocking *all* light. a tiny gap of one mm is enough to screw it altogether. you will need *much* IR, like summerday in full sun. and there, the 1mm gap will be too bright to adapt.
but it definitely works in the way posted, with *lighttight* welders googles and filters. i put aluminum foil around my googles, but unfortunaly it doesnt fit perfectly between my eyes, so i still have light leakage.
but it does look cool outside, after perhaps 15 mins "dark"adaption. colors look different, grass and all green plants are very bright, it is quite similar to what real IR photographs look like.

still someone reading and interested here? will post more then..

manuel