RPi Night Vision Camera IR LED intensity cutting filter

thingiverse

This is one of my first models created in TinkerCAD when I initially started 3D printing. It's a bit rough but gets the job done. Now that I'm adding Octoprint to my newer Ender 3 printer, I've decided to post this file. I discovered that the IR LEDs on my Raspberry Pi Night Vision Camera are too bright and overpower the normal lights for the camera, resulting in everything appearing as an odd black and white image. Even adjusting the daylight sensor potentiometer or removing one LED didn't make a difference. The LED and camera-to-printer distance is simply too close together. These cameras were designed to illuminate objects 10-20 feet away. To reduce the LED intensity while still retaining night vision capability, I designed these filters. You'll need two of them, obviously. They're friction-fit. Be aware that the black lens on the LED also appears to be friction-fit without any adhesives. At least both my cameras are. There's a cutout for the Light Sensor. Regarding Printer Settings, I found through testing that having an air space between the top and bottom layers of the filter reduces light transmission more than a solid layer of plastic of the same thickness - which was a surprise to me. So make sure you have a little bit of infill between the top and bottom layers of the filter. Don't use infill greater than 25% or a high number of top/bottom layers if you want this filter to be as effective as possible. There's an example image with the room lights on (color) and with the lights off (monochrome). I used 4 top and 4 bottom layers with a 12% grid infill. If you still need to reduce intensity even more, you can scale these filters in the Z-axis and increase the number of top/bottom layers by the same amount while keeping the appropriate amount of infill.