Small interior cam with night vision?

[98 SNAKE EATER]

I'm currently running a Mini0906 dual cam for front/rear exterior shots and a B1W for an interior shot that I run constantly 24/7

I'd like to replace the B1W with something that has an IR array for night vision as the majority of the night footage is just unusable

What are my options for a decent camera with the same price/size/quality of the B1W, but with night vision?

I'm thinking I might just solder up some IR LED's and mount them above the camera, but looking into all options

 

[Nigel]

I'm thinking I might just solder up some IR LED's and mount them above the camera, but looking into all options

That won't work unless you also remove the B1W's IR cut filter, and the result probably still wont be great.

The B2W has a nice interior camera, but doesn't match your requirement unless you can repurpose the 0906.
The Viofo A129 IR is also nice, but again doesn't match your requirement.
All the cheap little IR cameras I've seen have had rubbish image quality, so maybe removing the B1W IR filter would be OK.

Hope someone else can give a better answer!

 

[Dashmellow]

Perhaps the easiest thing to do would be to just purchase a new lens for the B1W that doesn't have an IR-cut filter installed. That way you could always re-install the original lens one day if you should ever want it to be a normal daylight camera again and you won't have to deal with removing the filter from the current lens. You could also probably improve the performance of the B1W if you want by purchasing a well corrected better quality lens than shipped with the camera and that has a slightly wider (shorter) focal length for good car interior coverage along with a wider aperture for a brighter image. (you'll need to balance the lens aperture with whatever LED illumination you install)

TREEYE on AliExpress is an excellent, reliable source that many of us here on DCT have used on multiple occasions for custom lens purchases.

https://treeyelens.aliexpress.com/store/725056?spm=2114.10010108.0.0.23904c8cpmkLxb

For the IR illumination I'd highly recommend using 940nm LEDS. Unlike typical 850nm LEDS used on many CCTV cameras that have a red glow, 940nm LEDS are invisible to the human eye and therefore very discreet and non-distracting.

This link shows an example of the type of 940nm LED I'm talking although they appear to be out of stock at the moment. Any good electronics supply house will have them with different specs such as beam spread and power levels.

https://www.adafruit.com/product/387

 

[SawMaster]

The A129IR seems to be the best performer of the lot at the moment, but the B2W and the N2Pro I have do quite well with this too. The last two are 850nm and emit what is a barely visible 'red' to me, remembering than my eyes aren't so good. I'm sure you are aware that any IR illumination will glare onto the glass so any outside view will only see things which are fairly illuminated with outside of the car with the IR cam; other cams with their IR-cut filter shouldn't be affected.

As always, good crooks keep up-to-date with security technology, and it's commonly known to use a cellphone cam to 'scan' for IR sources which are usually at the cam they serve. This allows them to take counter-measures, but it also points out the things of value that someone feels a need to protect. So like a cam when driving this too is a double-edged sword in some ways. Overall it is probably going to deter more crooks since most of them aren't highly advanced in their procedures.

Phil