Fancy being an infrared detective? A team of hardware hackers has to dramatically slash the cost of infrared cameras.
The idea behind this Infragram project is to allow anyone to check on the health of plant life. The team says it expects to sell the cameras for around $35, but the price could potentially even be as a low as $10.
At that price any citizen environmentalist could get busy spotting oil or sewage spills in wetlands, for example. And buyers will be able to share their images 鈥� and learn infrared tricks 鈥� with likeminded users online.
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It took Infragram just a week to exceed its stated target of $30,000.
The project involves bulk buying cheap point-and-shoot 2-megapixel digital cameras and fitting them with a 鈥渟uperblue鈥� filter. This forces the red channel of the camera鈥檚 image sensor to produce an IR image that will be saved to the camera鈥檚 SD memory card.
The founders hatched the idea for Infragram after shooting images of the damage caused to Texan wetlands and coastlines by BP鈥檚 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in July 2010. The principle relies on the fact that red light is absorbed by plants during photosynthesis but infrared is not 鈥� so healthy plant life should reflect a lot of near infrared light. But if pollution has caused a die back, that won鈥檛 be the case.
Until now, professionals doing work like this have used expensive 鈥渧egetation stress cameras鈥� created by 鈥� costing between . But Infragram hopes to allow gardeners, farmers, activists and students to study such plant stress on the cheap.
