Hi all,
Wanted to know the overlaps between white light LEDs and IR. AFAIK, I can use a pass filter to get only IR output but I was wondering if I could just make a dedicated IR light with the general principles used with regular LEDs- do IR throwers exist, will the beam behave the same way as visible light and are there any cautions and potential pitfalls I should know about?
Thanks all!
Is this to view through a night vision device? I’m not really following why you want this.
Ideally yes I’ve made whitelight weapon lights successfully and am looking to experiment with the next step up
You’d likely have to roll yer own, though.
Can start with a C8 host and pick up a separate IR LED (I got a bunch from Amazon back in the day).
Need to figure out first whether you want 940nm, 850nm, or other. Then get the appropriate LED.
Then, the right driver for it. They’re typically 1.2V, even less than red LEDs, so you can’t just throw a linear driver at it and have it drop 4.2V down to 1.2V, ’cause it’d kinda cook itself (burning off 3V × the current as heat). Sadly, a crappy cheap dropping-resistor driver would work “best”(?). Forget about modes, LVP, etc., though.
And then stick within the spex of the LED, because they don’t really like being overdriven like white LEDs are used to.