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micky micky is offline
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Default Can a TV camera be blinded by IR?

On Tue, 21 Apr 2015 04:43:19 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

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.


The guy has a small one car garage in which he is licensed by the town to do state inspections on vehicles. This is not a big operation in any sense of the word. For some unknown reason, (possibly some unfounded concerns about noise, or perhaps because he is unfortunate to have a prick for a neighbor who can't seem to mind his own ****ing business)


Or because zoning, which was in place for years or decades before any of
this started, prohibits a repair shop.

he is not permitted to do any repairs on any vehicles, just inspections. Russ has actually fired up his compressor and walked towards his neighbors house and noticed that long before he reaches the property line the effect of road noise and distance squared makes the compressor just about inaudible.


A) You're assuming here that noise is THE reason. I don't want
anyone running an annoying business in my residential n'hood. Once
every few years, someone leaves a flyer in my mailbox about a daycare or
cosmetic business, or a massage business (genuine massage, not
prostitution) that they are conducting in their townhouse (I live in a
townhouse too, fairly close to all the others.) I've never objected to
any of these things, I don't know if they meet zoning requirements or
not (and I don't care as long as they don't annoy me) , but I save the
fliers and if any were to annoy me substantially -- perhaps one would
become very successful with lots of car and foot traffic -- I might
look into whether it is legal. So I save all the fliers for starter
evidence if I ever want to complain.

B) People often make the argument that even though the law prohibits
something, it shouldn't apply to my situation. It woudl be nice if
every situation could be examined in detail and just the right ruling
made, and I know one legal system where that is the goal, where each
case is decided on its own, although even that one has a rule which
applies sometimes which states "no exceptions". But most legal systems
have general rules that are meant to work most of the time.

C) The way to make exceptions here is to keep the neighbors happy.

If one considers how utterly ridiculous this really is in another sense though, how can the guy even run his business at all? Technically if a car fails inspection for a tail light being out is he supposed to send him on his way without being able to fix it himself?


Maybe he can't. Maybe the idea was a bad one.

The camera supposedly is supposed to catch him doing the repairs which will invariably be connected with many of those failed inspections. It would seem to me that the town is condoning this asshole trying to put my friend out of business.


I don't see how you can say that. If for whatever reason your friend F
is not allowed to repair cars, if his neighbor N is watching with a
camera to make sure he doesn't repair cars, then he's helping the county
enforce the law.

If F has an inspection station in a place where repairs are not
permitted, it's as if he made a mistake where he estabilished his
inspection station. That's his problem and it's not the n'hood which
has to ignore the zoning or whatever so that F can run a repair business
where it's not permitted.

It's likely at one time he had a shop in an area where it was zoned for
repairs and inspection, and for one of many reasons he closed the shop
and started working at home. I had my convertible top replaced
several years ago by a guy like that, who IIRC had a top shop in a
typical manufacturing or business area, or near gas stations and shops,
perhaps on a business street near a residential area, but where it was
permitted. He got old and wanted to semi-retire but wanted to work a
few hours a week doing convertible tops from his garage. So he does.

Whether he is zoned for this, I don't know. In circumstances like this,
it's more important to keep one's neighbors happy than it is to obey the
zoning law. An uphholstery and convertible top shop doesn't emit any
nozious gases or make much noise. An electric staple gun or a tack
hammer is the loudest thing there. And I'm sure he starts after the
neighbors are up and quits before the first one goes to bed.

Assuming his shop is not permitted by law, perhaps his neighbors on
either side and across the street are very laid back, or they were
friends for years when he had his other location, or he does free work
for them on their cars, or homes. When none of that works, the
universal medium of exchange is money, and maybe he pays some of them
100 dollars a year to not complain about something that doesn't really
bother them anyhow.

I grew up in a house on a pretty large lot, but I learned by the time I
was 21 that if my roommates and I were having a party, the best way to
avoid complaints by neighbors, perhaps for making too much noise too
late, is to invite them to the party. Even if they don't come,
they'll like you a lot better and are far far far less likely to
complain about the noise.

So off the bat without knowing more, I'd suggest F should work on
de-escalating the situation, instead of the opposite as your inquiry
about interfering with his camera suggested. Maybe he can offer to
do some car repairs for the N. Maybe he can bake them a pie or
cake, or buy one, and bring it over as a peace offering. Because
you've made it sound like N has the law on his side, wrt not running a
repair business. So it woudl be nice if they got along, whether the
neighbor relents on the business or not.

In a sense I like the TV station route. And we have a local ABC affiliate 20 miles from here. However on the other hand no one wants to be put under a microscope either and I suspect that would be inevitable. Whether he's trying to get a peek at the daughter is questionable however she shouldn't have to be concerned about that.


Where do you get the crazy idea she shouldn't have to be concerned?
One of the first things a mother is supposed to teach her daughter is to
close the shades. Starting I would guess when the girl is 4 or 5
years** old, well before puberty so it seems like it's not about sex but
about privacy. Does she have a mother or an aunt or grandmother? If
not or if they're falling down on the job, it's up to the father and
even though he is 5 or 10 years late, it's not too late. "A proper
young woman shuts the shades when she is undressed or changing her
clothes."


**Starting when, I'm not quite sure. When she is old enough to take a
bath by herself, or even maybe get undressed by herself, or whenever
she's old enough to reach the string that controls the shades or blinds.
By the time she's 14, she can probably do all these things.

Even if his only target is the yard I feel that it still could be looked at as spying. At the least a peeping Tom.


Peeping Toms sneak up to the house and kneel down next to the window so
they can look under the shade. What your friend is doing is raising an
exhibitionist. If he's not careful, he'll also make her into a whining
trouble-maker who causes trouble and then blames other people.

When we bought our house I had two pre requisites. Very simply, adequate elevation for TV and two way radio, and no neighbors. That was 36 years ago and so glad that I can still walk out of my back door (bare ass if I want to) and just barely see my neighbors house through the woods.


So you've gone at least 36 years without any experience on knowing how
to behave when one has nearby neighbors. You're not the one to be
giving your friend advice.


Lenny