DIY Night Vision - Fitting a battery holder

This building lark is getting highly addictive. So in this installment of building the DIY Night Vision I cover a very basic element of fitting a battery pack inside the screen mounting box.

There are two ways you can do this:
1. Standard battery holder (for 3 x 18650 batteries) for an external charger. View image
2. Battery holder with an intergrated charging circuit. In my current version. View image

The plastic box itself is easily available and if you want to replicate what I have built you can buy it here Plastic box

I have opted for the standard for simplicity and cost at present. However I do see their being a benefit to the Night Vision kit to have an intergrated battery source that is essentially a plug and play affair.

 

 My kits are available all read built so you don't have to go through the pain of doing this yourself.

DIY Night Vision

Well you are probably here because you want to know about building your own night vision. So here it is. If you have been here before and read my first attempt, looking back what a hack, it worked but was far from neat. There was so much I didn't like but all that has now changed. Look at what we have now: Insert new scope picture.

And this is how it looks, excuse the footage as its hard to film one handed in the dark. I am constantly refining the design but at present it has its own internal battery pack, which takes 3 18650 lithium batteries but there is always a decision in the back of my mind as to having an external battery source? Decisions decisions...... Anyway so after it has been nigh on a year since I have done any instructions I thought I would list all my videos here so you can build your own, note I do charge to build the kits as it is my time but you can build this yourself if you have the time and patients. So here we go, please feel free to watch all the videos, comment and share blah blah blah and get in touch if you get stuck. 1. Rough Guide to putting the kit together. 2. Wiring the screen - Part 1 3. Wiring the screen - Part 2 4. Screen mount on the scope Still updating...... please hold the line......

Night Vision kits for sale starting from £30!

Well I have taken the plunge. The basic starter kits are now for sale.

Starter kit will get you:

Black Plastic case

Silicone Hose

Plastic end cap

2.1 mm DC connector

£30 will get you the basic kit that is pre-drilled for your power supply and camera. All you then have to do is add your own choice of camera,screen and batter from Ebay and off you go.

For £120 will get you the full build excluding battery pack. If you wish to have a different choice of camera this will obviously go up in price but this can be discussed.


I

FFPMEG with the Raspberry Pi

FFMPEG is great utility for essentially messing around with video, images and sound files. I will state from the start that I am no professional with this but I am just getting to grips with some bits. However using the Raspberry Pi I have already achieved:

1. Converting multiple images into a slide show
2. Combined Espeak .wav file with said slide show

Now doing so paves the way for some possible tutorial videos on the fly. Imagine if you had a step by step instruction guide and the necessary photos to back each step up? Hmmm. You could go down the route of manually doing a voice over, including the text slapping it all together. I might take you several hours to do so but I am currently working on seeing if I can get a reasonable quality instruction video with voice over and text which is purley driven from a CSV file? Not only that but a script that will fire off so you upload a file and off you go.

Ok this might sound boring to you but it is fun for me to do as it allows me to code without the hassle of passing it via a QA manager.

How to build DIY Night Vision for a rifle scope

I have been a little quite recently but that is not because I have not been doing anything. I have a few projects on the go as usual and it is difficult to find time to do what I want whilst committing to my day job and family life.

Anyway. I thought I would update my followers, me at present by the looks of it, with my latest revision of my DIY Night Vision kit for air rifles. Again if you don't approve then, well, tough.

I have posted two videos that give you an idea of the finished version which I must admit is better than the first as is more compact, easy to fit and can double up as a stand alone spotter given the correct lighting with Infa Red.

Build video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG8P...xmTiyGA1xm63SA

Finished product:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fwf...m63SA&index=41

Note: I filmed the end version before the build video.

I am looking to start selling these as either DIY Nightvision build kits, fully built kits or kits with the wiring loom complete. The latter if you are doing this yourself you will realise that it is the biggest headache of them all.

Ford Focus Electrical issue - Alternator

Not the usual type of blog but more of an information post really. As there are a lot of Ford Focus's out there this might help someone.

Ford Focus Electrical problem - My headache, well the son-in-law's really.

1. Symptom
2. Cause

3. Solution

The symptoms of the underlying electrical problem is as follows:

1. Crackling Speakers
2. Dash board clocks work intermittently or only at low revs
3. Relays clicking for no reason
4. Battery excessively hot after a short journey, long journey might make the battery hiss or leak fluid.

As with most modern cars electrics have come along way and it can be difficult to diagnose every fault easily. The symptoms described are based on
real life events and if you are in any doubt take your vehicle to a trained motor technician for advanced diagnosis.

The cause of the symptoms described were traced to a faulty alternator. This became apparent when testing the voltage being applied to the battery.
Normal voltage generated from the alternator should be about 14v however upon testing the voltage the voltage was closer to 19v. This gave the reason
behind the hissing battery as it was essentially cooking itself. As to the remainder of the other symptoms they were also indicators of this as when the revs
rose up the voltage increased even further.

With alternators the most common way of failing is due to the carbon bushes wearing away however this normally results in a lower voltage or non at all.
This therefore indicates that the volatge regulator that is housed within the alternator had failed thus allowing excess voltage to be applied to the
vehicles electrics.

You could remove the alternator and attempt to change the volate regulator. This could be the cheapest option however does require the ability to strip
the alternator down and rebuild which might be out of reach to the average DIY motor mechanic. The simplest and easyest option is therefore a direct
replacement.

Raspberry Pi - Salt and Ice Challenge - WARNING

Raspberry Pi plus TellStick equals Geek Heaven

It has been a while since I last posted but that is not to say that I am not doing anything. For a while now I have had a Raspberry Pi and it was something that when it was released caused a bit of storm. A low cost circuit board that had the ability to be programmed (used very loosely here) anyway you wish.

So knowing what this little piece of kit was capable of it was then time to add some bits to it to so I could build........... a DIY Home Automation system. I am going to control one table lamp device wirelessly with a basic web interface.

Nothing too intensive

For this kit I bought:

1. Raspberry Pi - There are additional items like SD Card, USB cables, mouse and keyboard to get setup but I won't be covering that in too much detail.
2. Tellstick - A USB transmitter that broadcasts at 433Mhz
3. 3 Home Easy plug switches HE302
4. 2 Gang wall switch with dimmer HE108

First of all get your up to date Wheezy linux distrobution. I won't go into detail on this as it is well documented.

Once you are up and running you need to install four items.

Personally I followed this order.

1. Lightppd server - web interface hosting on your own server
2. PHP5 - server side scripting
3. Mysql - Database storage for events (note to self hurry up and do the temperature sensor article)

Install 1, 2 and 3 by following the instructions here http://www.penguintutor.com/linux/light-webserver this is by far the most easy instructions I have found to date and caused no problems at all.

Next install the software on the Pi for the tellstick by following the instructions here http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Tellstick_core Once you are done there all you need to do is drop the following code into a file called "index.php"

 <?php

include 'temp.php';
?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/style.css">
<?php
if (isset($_POST['RedON']))
{
exec("python /var/www/pifaceon.py");
}

if (isset($_POST['RedOFF']))
{
exec("python /var/www/pifaceoff.py");
}

if (isset($_POST['plugon']))
{
exec("/usr/local/bin/tdtool -n 1");
}
if (isset($_POST['plugoff']))
{
exec("/usr/local/bin/tdtool -f 1");
}

if (isset($_POST['plugon1']))
{
exec("/usr/local/bin/tdtool -n 101");
}

if (isset($_POST['plugoff1']))
{
exec("/usr/local/bin/tdtool -f 101");
}

if (isset($_POST['allon']))
{
exec("python /var/www/pifaceon.py");
exec("/usr/local/bin/tdtool -n 1");
exec("/usr/local/bin/tdtool -n 101");
}
if (isset($_POST['alloff']))
{
exec("/usr/local/bin/tdtool -f 1");
exec("/usr/local/bin/tdtool -f 101");
exec("/usr/local/bin/tdtool -f 4");
exec("python /var/www/pifaceoff.py");
}

if (isset($_POST['microon']))
{
exec("/usr/local/bin/tdtool -n 7");
}

if (isset($_POST['microoff']))
{
exec("/usr/local/bin/tdtool -f 7");
}

if (isset($_POST['livingroom']))
{
exec("/usr/local/bin/tdtool -n 4");
}

if (isset($_POST['livingroom']))
{
exec("/usr/local/bin/tdtool -f 4");
}




?>

  <title>Tell Stick Plug Control</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1 style="text-align: center;">Mawston Mansion</h1>

<div class="container">
    <div class="de">
        <div class="den">
          <div class="dene">
            <div class="denem">
              <div class="deneme">
            <span><? echo $temp; ?></span><strong>&deg;c</strong>
              </div>
            </div>
          </div>
        </div>
    </div>
</div>


<p>Select the device you wish to turn on and off?</p>
<br>
<?
//$ipaddress = $_SERVER["SERVER_NAME"];
//echo $ipaddress;
?>
<form method="post">
  <table
 style="width: 75%; text-align: left; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"
 border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
    <body>

</div>


<div height: 50%;>
      <tr>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><b>Device On</b></td>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><b>Device Off</b></td>
   
      </tr>
      <tr>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="RedON">Lamp On</button></td>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="RedOFF">Lamp Off</button></td>
<tr/>
<tr>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="plugon">Downstairs TV On</button></td>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="plugoff">Downstairs TV Off</button></td>
      </tr>

<tr>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="plugon1">Upstairs TV On</button></td>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="plugoff1">Upstairs TV Off</button></td>
      </tr>
<tr>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="allon">Coming Home On</button></td>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="alloff">Going Out Off</button></td>
      </tr>

<tr>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="microon">Nuke the food</button></td>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="microoff">No Nukes, No Nukes</button></td>
      </tr>

<tr>
    <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="livingroom">Livingroom On</button></td>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="livingroom">Livingroom Off</button></td>
      </tr>
<tr>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="livingroom1">Youtube On</button></td>
        <td style="text-align: center;"><button class="button" name="livingroom1">Youtube Off</button></td>
      </tr>
    </body>
  </table>
</form>

<p>

<?

?>
</p>
</div>

</body>
</html>

Create another folder within www called "css"

Within the folder of css create a file called "style.css" and insert the following code

h1
{
color: white;
}

body
{
background-size:cover;
background: -webkit-radial-gradient(circle, #1a82f7, #2F2727);
color: white;
padding:50px;
margin:0px;
width:100%;
height:50%;
}
div
{
display:block;
}


.button {
   border-top: 1px solid #96d1f8;
   background: #65a9d7;
   background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#3e779d), to(#65a9d7));
   background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #3e779d, #65a9d7);
   background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #3e779d, #65a9d7);
   background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #3e779d, #65a9d7);
   background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #3e779d, #65a9d7);
   padding: 5px 10px;
   -webkit-border-radius: 8px;
   -moz-border-radius: 8px;
   border-radius: 8px;
   -webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0,0,0,1) 0 1px 0;
   -moz-box-shadow: rgba(0,0,0,1) 0 1px 0;
   box-shadow: rgba(0,0,0,1) 0 1px 0;
   text-shadow: rgba(0,0,0,.4) 0 1px 0;
   color: white;
   font-size: 14px;
   font-family: Georgia, serif;
   text-decoration: none;
   vertical-align: middle;
   }
.button:hover {
   border-top-color: #28597a;
   background: #28597a;
   color: #ccc;
   }
.button:active {
   border-top-color: #1b435e;
   background: #1b435e;
   }
#content
{
height: auto:
width: auto:
}

h1
{
color: white;
}

body
{
background-size:cover;
background: -webkit-radial-gradient(circle, #1a82f7, #2F2727);
color: white;
padding:50px;
margin:0px;
width:100%;
height:50%;
}
div
{
display:block;
}


.button {
   border-top: 1px solid #96d1f8;
   background: #65a9d7;
   background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#3e779d), to(#65a9d7));
   background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #3e779d, #65a9d7);
   background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #3e779d, #65a9d7);
   background: -ms-linear-gradient(top, #3e779d, #65a9d7);
   background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #3e779d, #65a9d7);
   padding: 5px 10px;
   -webkit-border-radius: 8px;
   -moz-border-radius: 8px;
   border-radius: 8px;
   -webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0,0,0,1) 0 1px 0;
   -moz-box-shadow: rgba(0,0,0,1) 0 1px 0;
   box-shadow: rgba(0,0,0,1) 0 1px 0;
   text-shadow: rgba(0,0,0,.4) 0 1px 0;
   color: white;
   font-size: 14px;
   font-family: Georgia, serif;
   text-decoration: none;
   vertical-align: middle;
   }
.button:hover {
   border-top-color: #28597a;
   background: #28597a;
   color: #ccc;
   }
.button:active {
   border-top-color: #1b435e;
   background: #1b435e;
   }
#content
{
height: auto:
width: auto:
}

@import url(http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Dosis:200,400,500,600);
html, body { height: 100%; }

.container { width: 300px; margin: 10px auto 0; }
.de .den, .de .dene, .de .denem, .de .deneme { position: absolute;  left: 50%; top: 50%; }
.de {
    position: relative;
    width: 240px;
    height: 240px;
    border-radius: 100%;
    box-shadow: 0 0 10px rgba(0, 0, 0, .1);
    background-color: transparent;
}
.den {
    position: relative;
    width: 210px;
    height: 210px;
    margin: -105px 0 0 -105px;
    border-radius: 100%;
    box-shadow: inset 0 2px 10px rgba(0, 0, 0, .5), 0 2px 20px rgba(255, 255, 255, 1);
    background: #df3341;
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(left, #df3341 0%, #d4f355 50%, #61c0ec 100%);
    background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, right top, color-stop(0%,#df3341), color-stop(50%,#d4f355), color-stop(100%,#61c0ec));
    background: -webkit-linear-gradient(left, #df3341 0%,#d4f355 50%,#61c0ec 100%);
    background: linear-gradient(to right, #df3341 0%,#d4f355 50%,#61c0ec 100%);
    position:relative;
}
.dene {
    width: 180px;
    height: 180px;
    margin: -90px 0 0 -90px;
    border-radius: 100%;
    box-shadow: inset 0 2px 2px rgba(255, 255, 255, .4), 0 3px 13px rgba(0, 0, 0, .85);
    background: #f2f6f5;
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #f2f6f5 0%, #cbd5d6 100%);
    background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%, #f2f6f5), color-stop(100%, #cbd5d6));
    background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #f2f6f5 0%, #cbd5d6 100%);
    background: -o-linear-gradient(top, #f2f6f5 0%, #cbd5d6 100%);
}
.denem {
    width: 160px;
    height: 160px;
    margin: -80px 0 0 -80px;
    border-radius: 100%;
    background: #cbd5d6;
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #cbd5d6 0%, #f2f6f5 100%);
    background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%, #cbd5d6), color-stop(100%, #f2f6f5));
    background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #cbd5d6 0%, #f2f6f5 100%);
}

.deneme {
    padding: 3px 10px 0 10px;
    width: 120px;
    height: 137px;
    display: inline-block;
    margin: -60px 0 0 -60px;
    color: #555;
    text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px white;
    font-family: 'Dosis';
    font-size: 50px;
    font-weight: 400;
    text-align: center;
}
.deneme span { position: absolute; left: 1px; top: 27px; font-size: 58px; font-weight: 200; }
.deneme strong { position: absolute; right: 10px; top: 15px; font-size: 28px; }

If you need guidance on the set up of the tell stick and pairing my video 'How to pair Home Easy Plug to Raspberry Pi with Tell stick' will give you the relevant code but for more comprehensive understanding please visit http://developer.telldus.com/wiki/TellStick_conf as this will give you all the information you need.

You will notice that there is an element of the webpage that is geared up for getting temperature readings. All you need to do create a file called temp.php in your 'www' folder and add the following code.

<?php
//File to read
$file = '/sys/bus/w1/devices/28-000003dcfad1/w1_slave';

//Read the file line by line
$lines = file($file);

//Get the temp from second line
$temp = explode('=', $lines[1]);

//Setup some nice formatting (i.e. 21,3)
$temp = number_format($temp[1] / 1000, 1, '.', '');


?>

Once you have done this you need to wire up your DS182b 1 wire temperature sensor. I have done the following two videos to help.

How to wire DS18b20 temperature sensor to a Raspberry Pi

How to get Temperature readings from DS18b20 for the Raspberry Pi

If you follow the instructions in both videos you need do nothing else!

As a note if you put your Raspberry Pi outside of your firewall you will then be able to remotely control the plugs anywhere where you can get access to your IP address.

Raspberry Pi Camera Lens Mount 21mm spacing

The Raspberry Pi camera comes in two models now.

1. The standard model for normal photos, images and videos. Timelapse being my favorite.
2. The Noir or No Infa Red camera to allow for infa red photography and nightvision images.

 Both camera perform very well and I have no complaints really except one small one which is the lens and mounting. If you are looking doing more than just standard photos or videos you are more than likely want to use a different lens and this is where one of the smaller problems comes up. The Raspberry Pi Camera board for both types of camera have a hole spacing for the mount at 21mm. I am not sure how or why this was chosen but the majority of lens adapters are either 20mm spacing or 22mm spacing. You can use either but the fitment is not secure and could damage the board if you over tighten the screws.

All is not lost though as I have managed to acquire a number of mounts with the 21mm spacing for all of those who are in the same boat as me. If you need me to send one out to you drop me an email and I shall send you detail of pricing and availability.

See the video and images below for further details of the mounts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcoIAhQU5Og