The project:
This is probably one of the easiest and cheapest mods I’ve ever done. The idea is from Kristian Engelbrecht - a Chaosprojects.com member - who passed it on to me. When he told me about it, I knew right away I had to do it and pass it on.

Oh god oh god oh why:
I believe that if you can upgrade an everyday item for only a few bucks and a few minutes, you owe it to yourself to jump at it.
This one truly fits that description. It will make your Apple In-Ear headphones fit much better in your ears, exclude the surrounding noise way more, and you probably won’t ever experience the headphones falling out of your ears even when doing sports…

Conceiving the project:

This is how you do it: First of all, you’ll need three things: Your Apple In-Ear Headphones, those foam ear plugs they hand out at concerts, and a Leather Punch (see image above)

Part one:

Remove the rubber cups from the headphones.
Grab one of the foam ear-plugs and pinch it flat as shown below…

Take the leather punch, set it to make a 4mm hole in the center of the foam ear-plug, as below

Part two:

Take the foam ear-plug, still pinched together, and push the Apple In-Ear Headphone through the hole in the foam ear-plug… as shown below

That’s it. Give the foam 5min to reach its original form and they are ready to use… Mold the foam to go in your ears and enjoy.

Materials/Price tag:
Well… this is probably the shortest ‘material list’ I ever put on this website with only the foam ear-plugs at about 2.5$ for a six pack - aprox. 80 cents a pair.

I hope you’ll enjoy your improved headphones and send Kristian a kind thought for sharing this idea. Should you have a good idea for a project you would like to see on this site, you can let me know here .

The project:
How to record a meeting in such a way that even a strip search wouldn’t blow the agents’ cover and also store the recorded intel in such a way that should the agent be compromised, the intel would be safe.

Oh god oh god oh why:
The list of movies in which an agent has his cover blown after the counterpart rips his shirt open to find his body-worn microphone taped to the chest and a tape recorder in his pocket is endless. Afterwards the agent is “disposed of” and the recorded intelligence is lost since the counterpart has obtained the recorder.

And finally I’d like to give a “heads up” to those who fear for industrial espionage or otherwise like to keep somethings secret. Cellphones is probably one of the easiest tools to use for gathering intel either as a dictaphone or a bug as you can read in this article.

Conceiving the project:
The solution to this problem came to me inspired by a newspaper article I saw a while back ago… “Police security was compromised during an arrest, where the police confiscated a cellphone from the perps, and forgot to turn it off. Later, the the perps called the phone which was set to both be silent, but also automatically take the call. Since the phone was stored in the same room where the police spoke of sensitive matters, the perps learned vital and secret information from the police”
Not that I in any way sympathize with the perps, but I must admit it was a rather clever way to place a bug amongst their adversaries.
You can read the article here in Danish “Here”

It occurred to me that the best way to hide the gear was to hide it in plain sight - preferably by using ordinary consumer products to make the illusion more believable. Everyday gadgets that wouldn’t raise suspicion.
Secondly, keep the recorded intel of the agent in case the worst should happen.
This means a transmitter/reciever solution - preferably encrypted. I wanted it to be one-man operated and easy to set up.
To me, the obvious gadgets to use are cellphones as they are easy to come by, they are well encrypted, these days people would take notice if you didn’t carry one and finally cellphones are optimized to the spoken word for clear conversation.

The Transmitter:

Actually there isn’t much to this. The phone the agent is carrying should just be a standard cellphone, although preferably anonymous or boring rather than the newest and shiniest model.

The next thing to give some thought is the position of the microphone.
To get the best recordings one should keep the microphone as close as possible to the source of recording
but without raising suspicion to what you’re doing. In most case scenarios, simply holding the phone casually or otherwise placing it in a good strategically place would be sufficient. However, in some cases it could prove beneficial to connect an external microphone to the phone. This of course is simply done by using a decent “handsfree set” giving the agent the opportunity of hiding the phone in a pocket and the microphone can be placed on the chest as normally done with a covert microphone. One thing I’d recommend is to disable the handsfree set so that any possible noise from from the speaker won’t give away that the phone is “on”.
To do so use a small screwdriver to pry open the little case as shown below.

When this is done use a wirecutter to disable the speaker…cut the two cables within the orange frame.

Put it all back together so it looks like it hasn’t been tempered with

The Receiver:
This is where the real fun begins… If our imaginary agency hasn’t got the manpower to have a tactical team sitting in a van outside the building (labeled Otto’s gardener service) with another cellphone and a recording device pressing “record” when receiving an incoming call, then we should automate this task a bit by using the automated answer function imbedded in the phone.
(A little detail you might want to take notice of, is that not all phones have this function)
I used an old SonyEricsson K750 phone kept in my “old gadgets soon to be obsolete” drawer, which has this very function.
Of all the phones I’ve come about with the “automated answer” function, every one of them needs to have a handsfree set connected before this function can be enabled, but since we need a handsfree set to connect the phone to a recorder, this poses no problem.
How to activate the automated answer function is shown below… (It’s actually much the same setup on most phones)

…and connect the cables to the recorder…

The recorder:
Instead of a finger pressing “record” and “Stop” we’d use the VOX technology (Voice activated recorder) to do just that.
There are various dictaphones and the likes that has this technology build in.
However I’d much prefer to use my Mac for this task. Eventually I’ll be uploading it to the computer anyway for storing or editing.
Setting up the Mac I just needed some software to make it a VOX recorder and fell in love with “AudioCorder” for OSX. (There is an abundance of VOX software on the internet for all OS systems, both for free and demo)
To set up the AudioCorder software do the following:

Set the “Start Trigger Length” to 0.0 Seconds:
(This determines when the recorder should start reacting to incoming sound.)

Select “Buildt-in Input/Line In”:
(Be sure to select the right input.)

Enable VOX:

Trigger Volume Start/Stop:
(Determines what level of volume the recorder should react on to start/stop recording.)

That’s it. You’re all set to play undercover agent.

Materials & Price tag:

Extra cellphone: 100$
Handsfree sets: 40$
Cables & plugs: 5$
Software: Free or Demo

Putting it to real use:
Let’s Imagine we are going to use our new contraption…
The agent turns on his receiver phone, Mac and the Audiocorder software before leaving his safe place.
He catches the first commercial flight across the atlantic and meets up with the target and after a routine security check for suspicious items the meeting begins, the agent calls his receiver phone and the computer starts to record…
… after a while the agent determines that he got the intelligence needed, he ends the call and deletes the outgoing call list in case security should find an interest in his phone.
He leaves… job’s done.

The project:
How to remotely disable security cameras nondestructively from quite a distance…

Oh God oh God oh why:
It’s no secret. A lot of my inspiration comes from movies and for quite some time I have become more and more annoyed by Hollywoods sometimes rather silly solutions for an agent to shut down security cameras in order to remain undetected: E.g. blowing up the nearby power-plant or rigging up gadgets in sewers, where they can be detected by renovation workers and the sorts. If you blow something up or otherwise break it, your counterpart will immediately know it is sabotage and rule out a simple technical malfunction.
Another thing that got me to write this article is the abundant usage of surveillance cameras everywhere which makes me want to burst the bubble about security of surveillance cameras by exposing their weakness. Switching point of view will also often lead to improvement…

The basics:
The laser sniper project can basically be split in to three minor projects: The laser and scope with mount, The remote and The switch

Part one: The laser and scope with mount

For the actual disabling of the camera, I decided to use a standard laser for simply blinding the camera. The simplicity of this construction makes me wanna weep (I think I read somewhere that the best spy gadgets are the simplest). In theory I’ll shoot it through a window using a suction camera mount as base, which also makes my contraption quite small and easy to put up almost everywhere.
Mount an ordinary sports rifle scope with the laser mounted directly on the scope and then calibrate the two so that the laser dot hits the center of the crosshair.

Part two: The remote

In the search for a transmitter/receiver solution that had both range and some sort of signal encoding (so others wouldn’t accidently trigger my laser) it hit me: cellphones… they both have potential worldwide coverage, are hardcore encrypted and since they are sold by the billions, they are quite affordable - especially second hand cellphones. So I dug out my Nokia 6280 from my “Cellphone with SLR-lens” project.
I cracked it open once again…

Flipped the top over, removed a warranty sticker and opened up, removed the built-in speaker and solded a sound output cable to speaker connectors.

The next step is done so that the relay on the switch doesn’t sound like Fred Astaire on speed when the phone receives an SMS…
Set up the phone to play a sound only once when receiving an SMS

I found a single click sound off the internet, uploaded it to the phone and set the phone to use it when receiving an SMS…

Part three: The switch

What I then needed was a way for the cellphone to communicate with the laser. Since I’m no wizz at making circuits from scratch, I started scavenging the internet for a building kit that would do the job for me and found a Sound switch from Smartkit. This little gizmo reacts to sounds like claps and flips a switch
I found a small acryllic case and built in the electronics, added a grafite core to filter out electrical noise and two resistors (together 125KΩ) to weaken the signal a bit. Finally, I gave it an on/off switch.

Putting the pieces together:

Finally we just need to set up the laser on target, plug it into the switch, plug in the cellphone and you’re all set.

Materials and price tag::

Hunting scope - 25$
BB gun Laser - 20$
Mountings - 15$

Cellphone - Anywhere form 50$ and up depending on the model and age

Switch circuit - 25$
Box - 3$
Wires, plugs, grafitecore, resistors and other - 15$

Putting it to real use:
Let’s just pretend for a moment that we were actually going to use this setup to enter a building without being seen…
Usually the guys that put up the cameras are clever enough to not just put one camera up to guard an entrance. But they put up several for two reasons; Mainly to get more than one angle on the perps trying to get in, and to make the cameras cover each other so the perps can’t just yank out the power-plug on the cameras…
To get in we’ll need a laser for every camera… (se the drawings below) and a cable-splitter for multiple lasers connected to one switch and cellphone.

And if we’re going to be smart about this… which I’d like to think… then maybe we should take out all the cameras covering the perimeter of the building to make it look like a system failure rather than us trying to get in unseen… just a thought.

Troubled thoughts during the projeckt:
I had some serious thoughts about how to trigger the laser on and off. First, I thought I’d use an old wrist watch as a timer, but ended up discarding that idea… It just didn’t feel right and if the “agent” had to shut down several security cameras, he would not only have to synchronize all the watches and set them up to turn the lasers on at the exact right time at once, but also turn them off after the job. My second idea was to remotely trigger the laser by radio or walkie-talkie. This would give the “agent” the possibility of e.g. pressing the call button on the walkie which would send out a beep to activate the lasers needed.
The problem with this solution is that by using a standard walkie, everybody else could activate the lasers accidently if they where using the same channel (keep in mind that almost all baby-alarms use the standard walkie-talkie frequency). So unless I were to use pro walkie with encryption, I’d have to modify my plans a bit.
In the search for a transmitter/receiver solution that both had range and some sort of signal coding, it hit me: cellphones. But how well will this actually work? Well, after I build this, I had to try it out on an old security camera… Then I had some friends sending it a test-SMS and finally I had someone I knew across the Atlantic do it as well… No problem there, either. It worked like a charm.

The fine print at the bottom…
In case you’ve missed the huge warning sign I’ve put up or choose to disregard it and are thinking about using the knowledge you’ve just gained to be messing with something you shouldn’t… Think about this: Maybe I left some minor, but crucial details out so assholes won’t be messing with something they shouldn’t be messing with… without getting their asses busted

So don’t !!!

For some unknown reason I got into my head that it would be really cool if my Macbook Pro would say something when shutting down.
This is how I went about it…

OSX doesn’t natively support configuring a shutdown sound so the first thing I needed to do was finding a plug-in that would bring me the magic.
This is taken care of by SystemSound plug-in (click to download) from Kiwi Fruitware

And setting it up is as easy as scratching your… … well you get the picture!

When download is completed locate the “SystemSound.prefPane” file with in the “SystemSound Extension” folder.

Double click the “SystemSound.prefPane” file to install the plug-in and choose if the plug-in should have an effect on your account only or all users…

Make sure to mark the “Use shutdown sound”

Unless you already have a sound suitable for this little tweak (remember the sound file needs to be in the .aiff format) this is what we need to find now…
My love fell on a soundfile suitably called
“Shutdown” (hold down [Alt] and click here to download)

In order to use our newly obtained and totally cool sound we need to convert it from a “.wav” file to a “.aiff file” . This is best done by using iTunes. In order to convert our sound-file to the right format we need to configure iTunes…
(If you are an experienced Mac user you might wanna skip the iTunes part)

Open iTunes and choose “iTunes Preferences”

Choose the “Import” button and select “Import Using: AIFF Encoder“ leave settings on “Automatic”

Now we are ready fore the actual conversion and to do so first drag the “shutdown.aif” file from the desktop in to iTunes…

…then (right-click on mouse) or (hold down [ctrl] and click) on the selected tune and choose “Convert Selection to AIFF”

Drag the newly converted .aiff file back to the desktop ready for use.

In order to make this work all fine and dandy you should go to your “Music ” folder on your hard-drive and make and create a new folder called “system fx” or what ever makes you happy and so you doesn’t accidently erase it under influence or something, leaving you very annoyed so you call me in the middle of the night screaming why the f..?#€&! is my Mac not saying goodnight to me as usual… phew… don’t wanna go there!

Finally we just need learn the plug-in and the sound-file to be buddies…

Go to the little blue apple in the upper left corner and choose “System Preferences”

In the bottom of the system preferences menu you’ll find the installed plug-in “SystemSound”

When opened choose the button“Shutdown Sound”

Go to the bottom and choose the “Add Sound” button and give the path Music>System FX>shutdown.aif

Done… Try to restart.
I hope you will have fun.

A little while ago I was given an iBook with a faulty screen (as in not working at all).
Having a hard time just throwing it away, I was looking for a way to put it to use even though it was a fairly old 500mhz G3 ibook.
Things being as they were, I thought the only thing to do was using it as a server even if it would mean quite a makeover - hence the fun.

First of all we need to take the iBook apart to remove screen, optical drive and battery. All of these aren’t necessary since we are building a server. “But what about restoring of OSX - don’t we need the hard-drive for that?” Actually, you don’t, since you can do it just as well in target mode from another hard-drive. Another thing we need to keep in mind is that we really want to keep the footprint of the iBook as small as possible.

Before taking an iBook apart I strongly recommend visiting ifixit’s guide on how to disassemble an iBook so that nothing unintentionally gets broken.

I take absolutely no responsibility for any destroyed iBook. Making this is your own responsibility !!!

Carefully remove the Power circuit board without breaking the cables for it. The next thing to do is cutting the alu-frame as shown with the red markings (see picture below). Be very careful!!! The frame breaks easily.

Remove the modem-port. This is done easily just by gently pulling of the wires from the logic-board and thereafter the modem port itself. Now we have room for the power-plug.

The next step is to remove the power-plug from the power circuit board and afterwards solder 5 extension wires between the two. These should be about 20cm in length. This is done because there isn’t room for the power circuit board, when the incasing is fully assembled. Mount the power-plug with some tape with glue on both sides.

The last thing we need to do before assembly is to take off the old power button and replace it with a new one that would be easier to build in. It is easily soldered on the same wires as the old one. Drill a small hole (that fits the diameter of the new power button) into the alu-frame and mount it. The result should look as the picture above.
Cut the lower case so it fits the footprint of the alu-frame and mount it.

Use some tape with glue on both sides to hold the Power circuit board on to the lower case and some duck-tape for the power-cords. The end result should look as the picture above.

Cut the upper case so it fits the footprint of the alu-frame and the lower case. Cut a hole for the power switch in the corner, mount the upper case and use some tape to hold the wires in place on the upper case. The result should look as below.

Backview

The next step is to pimp the server up a bit, so it doesn’t just look like half an iBook.
I went to my nearest second-hand book pusher and found a hardback that fitted my chopped iBook in thickness and footprint. I brought it home and gutted it, leaving only the cover for my project. To hold the iBook together with the cardboard-back use two angled pieces of plastic (about 15cm long) and glue each of them at the inside of the cardboard-back so that they’ll work as a rest for the iBook to stand on (as shown on the image below).

First I thought about wrapping the book using the remaining Leopard plush I had from my OSX Leopard ready hard-drive project but it didn’t seem right since OSX Leopard won’t run on a G3 processor. Besides, a plush leopard HDD is pimp, but to make a server as well, would make me look as if I was playing for the wrong team…
So eventually I decided to use a matted black plastic film to wrap it in and decorate it with one of my many Apple stickers from the countless Apple products I’ve bought and some letter stickers from my local bookstore.
What remains is a way to ensure that the half iBook doesn’t end up on the floor when handling the server… For that I’d simply use velcro-tape at the bottom of the half iBook and the rest-plates, making it quite simple to disassemble the server, but also holding the half iBook in place when handled.

Some thoughts about the project.:
I did have some concern that there would be a heat problem after the modding, but this wasn’t the case, since I’ve had it running for some time now with no problems at all.

I didn’t have the time for finding a solution for building in Airport. That will have to come later. Meanwhile there’s a lot of info about the subject if you google it.

Oh god! Oh why even build it when a Mac mini has just about the same volume and isn’t all that expensive? Well. First of all, I already had the iBook so making the project costed me a fraction of the price of a new Mac mini. Second: A Mac mini wouldn’t fit so neatly on my bookshelf. Third: Because I’m able to do so and love the challenge.

Read this article in Jive thanks to gizoogle.com
Or some other language with translate.google.com

I have always wanted a camcorder for myself and not just any camcorder. I wanted one a bit like a professional broadcast camcorder, where I would be able to mount ad-ons like pre-amps, lights and all the other ever so cool stuff you’ll see professionals packing. However I’m not about to pay the horiffic price of eg. a Red Camera . So let’s just build one…

Basically, a camcorder only consists of 8 things;

1) The optics
I’ll recomend SLR optics - they come in all shapes and sizes in a good quality at reasonable prizes compared to Camcorder optics. It’s time for dusting off the MF-lenses you’ve got in the attick. For how to mount the SLR optics on a CCD Camera read this article

2) Capturing
To capture the light that comes through the optics, I use a standard surveillance camera. These goodies comes in all shapes and sizes. I recommend a monochrome with 480 tv-lines or more. Colour cameras are quite expensive especially if you’d want 3CCD, and it’s very hard to control the colours of your recordings, if you don’t know what you’re doing. You should never choose a higher value than 0.5 lux when it comes to light sensitivity. If you stick to this you’ll always be able to shoot video indoor with just a few lamps turned on.

3) Storage/Recording
For storage/recording I have used a SONY Digital8 recorder. They are easy to come by and relatively cheap on e-bay. The really cool thing about these recorders is that you can record both from an analogue video source or digital (firewire) video source. So if your standards get higher you can always buy a security camera with a Firewire output. And the quality of these recorders are superb though they are aren’t that young. No doubt this is a pro video tool and with lots and lots of option settings.
Alternatively you can also use the Portable HDD recorder

4 + 5) Microphone & Pre-Amp
I won’t be getting into the Mic and Pre-Amp (this could be an article just in itself), although I would suggest a shotgun-microphone with a build-in Pre-Amp. Small battery operated Pre-Amps with a decent sound quality are hard to find…

6) Device to see WTF you are recording
Since decent viewfinders that you can actually use for this project are very hard and expencive to come by, I’ve chosen to use a LCD-screen instead. Luckily, I already had one that was as “made for the job” all ready with a hotshoe build on, so it would be easy to mount.

7) Batteries
Since both the recorder and viewfinder-screen carry their own battery pack, the only thing I had to supply with power was the security-camera (12v dc) done with 8 1,5v AA batteries. A lot of security cameras can even take aprox. +-3, but for the safety of your camera it may be a good idea to put a “current controller” between the camera and the battery pack.

Defining these 7 points, the rest is like hooking up your VCR with your tv… Well, almost. When connected right the battery data, recording data, etc. will show in the display… just like a regular camcorder.

So that I didn’t have to carry the whole thing in a bag and use 5 hands to operate it I have put on some sort of frame. This was made from an old Velbon monopod and other bits.

If you would like to see how it works out take a look at the film klip below…
I used the DIY Camcorder with a Nikkor 35-70mm f/3.3-4.5 lens.
Recorded through my window on a rainy and cloudy day in June in Denmark.

So whats to gain on this monstrosety…?
Well… You can say you build a camcorder yourself of course but you allso get a setup you can alter in so many ways… actually all the way to pro if you got the greens for it.
Make it go all digital with HDD recorder put on a 3CCD camera etc. there is no limit.
And if you like old B/W films then this could be the way, since you can make a pro B/W camera for less than 1000$.
The down side…
For the time being you’l have to do with out autofocus and you have to spend cuite som time chosing your components, but maybe that’s not a downside afterall. Most pro cameramen wouldn’t relie on autofocus and the time spend shearching for bits to your camera will only make it fit near 100% to the job.

Resently the cameras on cellphones are getting better and better. How ever the optics on them are mostly crap made of cheap plastic.
Then i spawned the idea “Why not oparate an SLR lens on to the cell?”
This hack will give you 36x optical zoom on your cell just because of the crop factor + the zoom of the lens you may use. I’d strongly recomend using a prime lens for easier calibrating the focal distance.
I chosed to use a Nikon 50mm f/1.4…

The first thing to do is get rid of the old crappy one…
1: Remove the plastic back of the cell



2: Remove the 4 torc-screws and gently pry of the lid, exposing the electronics.



3: Now it’s time for the really delecate stuff, getting the old lens off.
The promblem is that Nokia in all their wisdom glued the lens on the camera and to get i off, you’ll have to brake it by gently prying a screwdriver in between the lens and the tube holding it.

4: Now it’s time to put it all back together again (do step 2 and then 1)

5: You need to get a hold of a c-mount/SLR-lens converter… Like the one i used in the Super zoom on a surveillance camera. article.

6: Carve out a hole in the backplate to fit the converter. Remember the hole should be exactly above the CCD-chip, this is very important!!!

7: Use about 7 layers of moulding tape to hold the converter on to the backplate.

8: Assemble the phone and mount your lens.

Get ready to shoot!

NOTE: The downside of this project is that the a little wobly on the camera so focusing can be a little hard to do… And do to the fact, the nikon lens isn’t optimized for such a small chip the pictures taken, will have some light stribes along the sides of the foto.

I guess I’m one of the lucky ones who have several 2,5″ HDD laying around without a box - thereby rendering them somewhat useless. I went down to the local computer pusher to buy a suitable case (with both Firewire & USB2 of course).

I found a case that met my demands - however it was rather hideous, and being a Mac-guy and all, I knew something had to change… So what to do? Paint it? Hmm nope… Painting plastic and aluminum usually leaves a result worse than what I started with…

So I thought “Hey… Let’s wrap it to go with the new OSX”.

Tadaaaa! A furry OSX Leopard ready portable harddrive.

A special thanks to Jason at O’Grady’s Powerpage For good advice…

EDIT:
Here is what you need: 50×50cm of Leopard patterned (furry) plush (5$ - any decent girlfriend should be able to drag you to her nearest fabric-pusher), some fabric glue suitable for both cloth and aluminum (5$) and of course a suitable HDD-cabinet - preferably one that is made like a tube with end-pieces (around 65$). Then it’s just play n’ pray and you’ve got yourself an external harddrive to go with Leopard.

Inspired by the motion picture “The Jackal”, where Bruce Willis built a mean-ass automated gun (aka turret, aka sentry gun), I have always wanted to build something similar myself.

One of the hurdles I had to overcome was to automate the trigger… Iv’e tried loads of different solutions including electromagnets or weird solutions with strings and a rotary motor.

A major goal in this process is finding a way to get a rapid linear pull when flipping a switch upon which the “finger” should return to its original position… Ready for the next pull…

The solution I came up with (as shown in the pictures) was using the linear motor from the central locksystem used in a car. This was mounted on the gun with some pieces of aluminum from a studio rack mount and some parts for mounting a lock on a bike. I added a springcoil on the linear motor so it would go back to its original position. Finally I strung a wire from the “finger” and around back of the handle of the gun, thus making a soft but strong pull to the trigger.

Et voilá. Add 12v to the equation and you’ve got a lightning fast remote trigger and the ability to deploy rapid fire down range.

Be sure to read “The Turret #2″ - Mounting the gun. Coming soon.

For some reason I’ve always wanted a video camera with a huge amount of zoom.
Why..? Well. For no good reason at all. I just did. That drew me to build the zoom converter..

This strange setup gave me a good idea about the aprox distance between the cam & the lens.

A little theory:
One of the major issues to get at good picture is the optic the light has to pass through, before it hits the LCD, CMOS etc.
And the cheapest way to get a quality lens and with the most amount of zoom, is by using your standard 35mm SLR optics of any brand. Even a lot of the cheapest ones will do. ( a standard 70-300mm costs aprox 160$). These optics are the ones with the biggest market share and there fore the cheapest and easiest to get.

The obvious choice of camera is the standard CCD surveillance-camera.
They are cheap and comes in a large variety of versions; Monochrome, color, one CCD, 3CCD, Low res, High res, High speed, etc. For my little experiment i just used a 50$ Monochrome CCD camera. (get them at ebay)

With these things in mind.
All i now needed was to build the converter pice between optic and camera.
Easier said than done… However since all my 35mm optics where Nikon. I bought an old Nikon camera and slaughtered it.. Loads of fun and half an hour later i got the pice i needed. Just the small bayonet couplingthat attaches the lens to the SLR camera. I also had an old CCD-camera that endured the same fate as the SLR-Camera. So now i also had the C-mount coupling to attach my converter to the surveillance-camera. I went a workshop to make me a small cylinder and a few other items to make it work..

I will soon admit… It isn’t pretty.. but it worked like a charm.

Oh! The agony.
When i two weeks later found that some other soul got the same idea…
And even got the nerve to mass-produce the converter i thought necessary to build myself. Back in the old 8mm days, a genius thought of using low-cost photo-optics on his 8mm video cam. To my fortune they come in all shapes and sizes… So, i rushed my credit-card through the web-teller and got myself quite a few different types. One of course being Nikon-adapteble… the rest is calibrating…

Then i just added my 500mm Mirror optic and no neighbor was safe for my ever watchful eye..

A little theory #2
The 35mm SLR photo optic is made for 35mm film the CCD in my camera is 1/8 of this. Thus. I will gain x8 the amount of zoom the lens holds… 500×8=4000mm. NICE LENS!!!

Success!!