Infrared Security Cameras: The Pinnacle of Home Security Surveillance Technology
It seems to be a consistent thing, historically - technological progress takes massive leaps forwards during times of war, with new ideas being born even as human life is extinguished. Such was the case in Korea, where infrared cameras first gave US soldiers the advantage of sight in any conditions, along with the ability to sight enemy troops, hiding amidst the foliage in the trees above them. These days, aside from their military applications, these instruments are being put to use in any number of fields, from building inspection and astronomy to, you guessed it, home security surveillance.
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.
White the footage they record might be difficult for the average person to puzzle through, properly trained thermographic analysts can often formulate accurate pictures of those caught on camera. As such, infrared security cameras can be a great boon for home security surveillance where ordinary wireless surveillance cameras are rendered insufficient due to inadequate outdoor lighting conditions.
The thing to guide you in your decision as to whether to purchase what can be a rather expensive piece of audio-visual equipment (thermal cameras from FLIR, the major producer of the technology, start at around $2000) should really be need. External infrared security cameras will be totally unnecessary in neighborhoods with well-lit streets, as they will be on porches or driveways with motion-activated lighting.
There is, of course, also a cost-saving element to infrared security cameras. All you need to do is have your infrared security cameras set up in such a way that they alert the fire department when the ambient temperature in your home rises above a certain level, and they can double as fire detectors, eliminating the need for a smoke detection system.
To learn more about Home Security Surveillance be sure to check out www.Home-Security-Pro.com.
- Jeffrey Parker
