Works well when up against a video camera with no IR cutoff filter. Many security cameras that are designed to used in low light level and with IR illumination can be defeated this way.

Usefulness against a digital camera, such as in the hands of every tourist and paparazzi, would be limited due to the IR cutoff filters in front of the sensor.

Try it, probably useless against a DSLR.

Posted at 8:52 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by Andrew Cooper

You can do a similar thing with bright IR LEDs to blind most CCTV cameras, especially at night. Works well with a hat or on your collar too if they are bright enough.

Posted at 8:53 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by mojo

a novel idea but not a very neat implementation, I’ve seen a similar hack where the person put a bunch of infra-red LED’s in a band worn their head to mask their entire head from CCTV cameras
using 3mm led’s will make them more discreet, also filing the ends off will increase the beam spread
however using infra-red led’s to hide your face will only work if the camera trying to take your picture doesn’t have an infra-red filter, and most do…

Posted at 8:56 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by Haku

1. those are AG3 batteries, which are alkaline, not lithium, and 1.5v.
1.1. those have a capacity of about 23mah. I wouldn’t expect this to work for more than about 30 mins, until the cell voltage drops below the vf for the LED.
2. if a paparazzi was using a camera, they would likely have spent above $50 on it, and it would have an infrared filter. Even my phone camera has a somewhat ineffective IR filter on it, which means it’d just see this as white dots. My D40 doesn’t see even my 0.5W IR LED star.
3. Metacafe. Draw your own conclusions. You can’t un-view something.

Posted at 9:55 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by gm

cute.
would be useless against film cameras.
would be semi-useless against cameras with ir filters.
the end part of the video looks totally fake. ir leds would not “glow” like that unless they were pointed right at the camera, all the time.
hey, you ever hear of those guys that post fake DIY stuff online, just for the humor? i call shenanigans.

Posted at 10:12 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by emilio

looks very manipulated. i can believe the first shot of the glasses working, but i do not believe the shot of the guy getting out of the car one bit. in my experience these infrared leds simply show up as white dots.

Posted at 10:40 pm on Jun 27th, 2008 by Chee

>hey, you ever hear of those guys that post fake diy stuff online, just for the >humor?

Or money: http://www.metacafe.com/producer_rewards/

Posted at 12:01 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by x

phail hack tbh. the end is obviously fake as #5 has pointed out, and the obvious most every camera worth a damn (and paparazzi tend to have the best of the best) will have said filter …. so the best you will give them are 2 nice glowy spots on the sides of your tacky specs. if that

Posted at 1:09 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by zigzagjoe

wouldn’t work…. like has been stated…. ir filters are very good at blocking this.
now how about some real hacks.

Posted at 1:18 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by dex

Note that Johnny Chung Lee has been filmed wearing IR spectacles. As a matter of fact, somebody took a photo of me wearing the IR glasses I built and put it on flikr:
http://flickr.com/photos/mikepirnat/2343310102/
Note that my face is plainly visible.

That said, two people at the conference told me that the glasses messed with their cameras, though if memory serves, one of them said it screwed up his autofocus.

Posted at 1:39 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by a random John

I just tried this with a bunch of LEDs, it didn’t jam the camera or even glare out the test image. Either the LEDs weren’t bright enough or it doesn’t work. I’ll try some brighter LEDS(maybe even fricking luxeon LEDs).

BTW did I mention this guy censored my comment when asked where the LEDs were obtained?

Posted at 2:02 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by t-1000

wooohoo, we get fake hacks now … :/

Posted at 4:41 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by rasz

Heh, it’s not a fake hack, it just doesn’t work with alot of cameras because they have IR filters.

This would be extremely effective against night cameras which use IR spotlights to discreetly light an area to the camera.

Posted at 9:15 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by blankthemuffin

but should be useful against night-vision cameras using ir, right?

Posted at 10:29 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by joen

A hat with lithium cell inside and some IR style cree’s will work.

Posted at 3:18 pm on Jun 28th, 2008 by BigD145

The concept is great, just used for the wrong thing this is more of a “Anti-Big Brother” type thing.
As some have stated, this I really infective against your common photo type cameras, they have Ir filters.
What this is great for are ‘Low Light’ cameras, i.e. security cameras, they usually use Ir lamps for illumination at night.

Posted at 5:43 pm on Jun 28th, 2008 by Seamus Dubh

I’m surprised Kip Kay didn’t narrate this.

Posted at 1:47 am on Jun 29th, 2008 by pastasauce

what if you spend alot of money on the hat idea and use some sort of IR laser beam array, perhaps several diodes with movable arc-style motors like club laser boxes?

Posted at 3:16 am on Jun 29th, 2008 by simpletext

You guys totally posted something exactly like this a few months ago. I’ve been trying to find it but I can’t seem to get the right post. It was the same thing except the guy used goggles or something.

Posted at 4:27 am on Jun 29th, 2008 by kmangwing

Ignoring IR filters, the LEDs would only show up as small white dots - just as high brightness white LEDs would.

This could /possibly/ work on a security cam set up for night vision with IR, but you’d need a fuckton of LEDs, and at night, you’d just make yourself MORE visible, not less, probably.

The hack is fake, as previously stated. Why hasn’t this post been edited to say that? The whole Pentium drink warmer post was corrected pretty quick.

As for autofocus - some cameras use IR rangefinding for autofocus. That’s why it would mess with the autofocus. The IR autofocuses don’t like windows either, cause of reflection.

Posted at 9:46 am on Jun 29th, 2008 by TheKhakinator

Good Idea. I think I’d make it just because it’s interesting. I have a camera that I removed the IR filter from, so this might be interesting to test it against that a normal camera with filer. Anyway, the video you embedded has been removed from Medacafe so here’s another one.

Posted at 8:38 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by Chris R

Tried to make this,even with four IR LEDS, didn’t work. Am I using IR leds not powerful enough? or is this video a fake?

Can someone tell me if this is possible and where I can find the correct LED’s?

Posted at 8:38 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by Night Ninja

Since this really only works with low-light cameras, what about using the same idea, but with a different (perhaps illegal, but that’s not the point ) implementation: installing several inside your car’s license plate holder (around the license plate). You could power them off the car’s 12v signal, and I’m thinking it would effectively white your license plate for any type of traffic monitoring camera.

The problem I see is knowing how a person could test this without knowing exactly what type of cameras are being used.

Posted at 9:27 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by K1ngfunK

Apparently my embed code was disabled (I assumed it would be). Here.

http://www.vodwizard.com/video/462/anti-paparazzi-sunglasses.html

Posted at 9:52 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by Chris R

I did something similar to this about a month ago. I used twelve IR LEDs in throwie form to blot out the identities of myself and five friends during a mostly harmless prank on my high school. The viewing angle must’ve been very broad, because nobody got any flack for it and no security pictures were used to fuel the subsequent manhunt.

For those interested, we were bonding traffic cones to the middles of a row of desirable parking spaces that the student council had greedily reserved for themselves.

Posted at 12:08 am on Jun 30th, 2008 by Solenoidclock

wtf lol

Posted at 4:00 am on Jun 30th, 2008 by simpletext

?

Posted at 6:24 pm on Jun 30th, 2008 by SimpleText