IR camera

WOW! It's been a while hasn't it? Sorry friends. I really haven't had motivation to update the blog. So, I'm going to try to crank out a ton of posts today, because the science fair is in 10 days. Guess what I'm doing for it? RIGHT! Anyway....

There isn't really a component in the whole touch screen that I can say is the most important. Though, the brighter your blobs, the better the resolution, and the faster the frame rate will result in a better touch screen.

So I found a camera that fit my needs. It was cheap, had a high resolution, and a fast frame rate. The Logitech Webcam C600 is what will pick up the 'blobs' in my final touch screen. In this post, I explain why the camera is needed, and show how it picks up the IR light. Unfortunately, most commercial cameras come with a built-in IR filter, so your pictures don't look washed out. For my camera I'm going to remove the IR filter, and add a IR high pass filter. This filter will filter out everything except light around 880 nm.

The first step, is taking the camera apart. If you look on the side of the camera, there are two plates that can be removed. The one with the button is the one you want to remove. Simply just put your fingernail inside to pop it off. Then locate the hole, almost just underneath the button, and take the screw out with a screw driver.

After you do that, the camera should just pop into two pieces.

Now you need to take of the lens and remove the IR filter. I had trouble removing mind, and ended up just breaking it off.

And now that thats over with, It's time to put on the new filter! I ordered my filter from omegabob2. You can visit his store here. I ordered the "NIR Filter, 880DF20, 11.5mm dia, X 4.6mm thick". The transmissions specs were some of the best I could find for it's price. $24 isn't half bad.

So I cut out a spot on the camera where the IR filter could fit into and hot glued it into place.

After the camera was all finished, I tested it. The camera seems to work great, the blobs are a little faint, but as long as I'm in a room with only florescent lights (they don't produce IR) I should be fine!