Turn Your Webcam into an IR Spycam
Posted 01/01/2006 at 12:07pm
| by Niko Coucouvanis

View the world through its heat, not its light.
WHAT YOU NEED
> Mac-compatible USB Webcam (we used a Logitech QuickCam Zoom, $79.95, www.logitech.com)
> Exposed 35mm film negative
> X-Acto knife or other slim blade
The Webcam craze is over, but you can still have plenty of fun with the hardware. For example, you can replace your camera's internal IR (for "infrared" or "infrared radiation," depending upon whom you ask) filter with one that blocks non-IR light instead, creating an IR-sensitive camera that will capture your world in a whole new way. Here's how. (This hack also works on Apple's iSight, but that camera's too pricey to gut just for fun.)