View Single Post
  #18   Report Post  
Posted to sci.electronics.repair
mickgeyver[_2_] mickgeyver[_2_] is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 4
Default Can a TV camera be blinded by IR?

On Thursday, April 16, 2015 at 11:21:58 PM UTC-4, wrote:
A friend of mine has a neighbor who has stuck a small video camera in his bedroom window to spy on the friend's yard. The problem is in clear view of the camera is the friend's 14 year old daughter's bedroom window. The neighbor claims that the friend is running an illegal business out of his home and the camera is there to try to catch him at it. My friend hasn't tried to get the state police involved yet but the local town cops won't do anything about it.

Anyway I had an idea. I keep a small B&W TV camera in the shop connected to a monitor which I use to check IR remote transmitters. When I hold a suspect remote a few feet from the camera and operate it the camera is essentially "blinded" by the otherwise invisible infrared pulse train. Can something like this be done cost effectively but naturally on a much larger scale to blind Bozo's camera? My friend got ****ed off one night and sat there with a laser pointer directed at this camera for a couple of hours. Although it didn't resolve the problem, it did bring the cops down to advise my friend that he couldn't do that without violating the neighbors privacy! Makes you question the definition of "freedom". The distance looks to be about 200 feet. Thanks, Lenny.


Use the bright IR LED lighting BUT do it from inside the house.

What you do inside is expected to be private. That includes being
able to parade around inside your own house in the nude with the
shades up. Your neighbors cannot complain about it as it would
violate your reasonable expectation of privacy within your own
home. When you go outside it becomes a different issue.

With that said, a large bright LED array inside the window
should not cause you an actionable problem by the law. The onus
should then fall on the neighbor with the camera to prove you
are intentionally interfering with his activity. Simply state
in technical terms it is an 'experiment' being conducted to see
what kind of wildlife/extraterrestrial beings it attracts
(or something like that).