Since their inception for use by the U.S. military in the forests of Korea, infrared cameras have been put to use in any number of industries – from medicine to geological surveys. They’ve also grown into a pivotal tool in home security surveillance, rendering security systems complete in a way never before thought possible.
People these days often don’t fully understand the difference between ‘night vision’ security cameras and infrared technology. Night vision cameras predate infrared – in fact, night vision goggles, which use an array of lenses to intensify light up to half a dozen times what the human eye could perceive, were already in use during World War II. More modern variants use CCD lenses sensitized to light at Wavelengths invisible to the human eye. Such cameras incorporate a torch that shines light at that wavelength, effectively illuminating the scene for the camera while it appears unchanged, even pitch black, to human eyes.
Both these designs are known for producing images of inferior quality. Much of the time, the resultant footage is monochromatic, fuzzy and about as clear as the imagery you’d expect from a video game console in the 1980s.
True infrared security cameras do not provide any illumination of their own. Instead, they read and record the black body radiation of objects. This radiation is brought about by the heat emitted by objects, and as such can be detected totally independently of lighting conditions by use of the camera’s microbolometer. Of course, the imagery they produce doesn’t look much like ordinary video footage – it’s not going to tell you the color of a person’s hair, skin or clothes.
What it will do is assist you in determining their height, build and gender, what they did and where they might have left any traceable evidence such as fingerprints. What’s more, adding this state of the art technology to your home security surveillance system needn’t force you into completely rewiring your pad. The existence of wireless surveillance cameras of the infrared type means that you can have any footage captured transmitted to a remote location, and thereby uploaded to a storage cluster online, where you can view it through a private website.
Infrared security cameras can be an invaluable addition to homes where poor outdoor lighting conditions render ordinary wireless surveillance cameras insufficient. While their images might be hard for a layperson to interpret, they provide what, for a skilled thermographic analyst, amounts to full-spectrum coverage.
Thermal cameras from FLIR, the leading manufacturer of infrared security cameras in the world, start at about $2000. Since even the most basic model is, obviously, a substantially pricey piece of technology, you should do a thorough evaluation of your home to determine if an infrared security camera is even really necessary. If you live in a very well lit area with good visibility even during the night, an ordinary wireless surveillance camera should do the trick. You can further eliminate the need for infrared security cameras by having motion activated lighting on all sides of your home (instead of just in the standard location by the driveway or front door).
Lest I paint too dark a picture, however, you should know that infrared security cameras can help you save money on some fronts. For instance, if you properly programmed, they can render the need for smoke detectors null and void. If set to raise the alarm when ambient temperatures exceed certain safe limits, infrared cameras can act as very serviceable fire detectors.
To learn more about Home Security Surveillance be sure to check out http://www.Home-Security-Pro.com.
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