Anti-paparazzi Sunglasses

UPDATE: Video can also be found here.

Ah, the life of the work-a-day hacker: sure, it’s glamorous, but all the paparazzi dogging your every step can get unbearably stressful. Thankfully, you have a recourse with these anti-paparazzi sunglasses. They work by mounting two small infrared lights on the front. The wearer is completely inconspicuous to the human eye, but cameras only see a big white blur where your face should be.

Building them is a snap: just take a pair of sunglasses, attach two small but powerful IR LEDS to two pairs of wires, one wire per LED. Then attach the LEDs to the glasses; the video suggests making a hole in the rim of the glasses to embed the LEDs. Glue or otherwise affix the wires to the temples of the glasses. At the end of the temples, attach lithium batteries. They should make contact with the black wire, but the red wires should be left suspended near the batteries without making contact. When you put them on the red wire makes contact, turning the lights on. It’s functional, but we’re thinking that installing an on/off switch would be more elegant and it would allow you to wear them without depleting the batteries.

[via BoingBoing]

27 thoughts on “Anti-paparazzi Sunglasses

  1. Works well when up against a video camera with no IR cutoff filter. Many security cameras that are designed to used in low light level and with IR illumination can be defeated this way.

    Usefulness against a digital camera, such as in the hands of every tourist and paparazzi, would be limited due to the IR cutoff filters in front of the sensor.

    Try it, probably useless against a DSLR.

  2. You can do a similar thing with bright IR LEDs to blind most CCTV cameras, especially at night. Works well with a hat or on your collar too if they are bright enough.

  3. a novel idea but not a very neat implementation, I’ve seen a similar hack where the person put a bunch of infra-red LED’s in a band worn their head to mask their entire head from CCTV cameras
    using 3mm led’s will make them more discreet, also filing the ends off will increase the beam spread
    however using infra-red led’s to hide your face will only work if the camera trying to take your picture doesn’t have an infra-red filter, and most do…

  4. 1. those are AG3 batteries, which are alkaline, not lithium, and 1.5v.
    1.1. those have a capacity of about 23mah. I wouldn’t expect this to work for more than about 30 mins, until the cell voltage drops below the vf for the LED.
    2. if a paparazzi was using a camera, they would likely have spent above $50 on it, and it would have an infrared filter. Even my phone camera has a somewhat ineffective IR filter on it, which means it’d just see this as white dots. My D40 doesn’t see even my 0.5W IR LED star.
    3. Metacafe. Draw your own conclusions. You can’t un-view something.

  5. cute.
    would be useless against film cameras.
    would be semi-useless against cameras with ir filters.
    the end part of the video looks totally fake. ir leds would not “glow” like that unless they were pointed right at the camera, all the time.
    hey, you ever hear of those guys that post fake DIY stuff online, just for the humor? i call shenanigans.

  6. looks very manipulated. i can believe the first shot of the glasses working, but i do not believe the shot of the guy getting out of the car one bit. in my experience these infrared leds simply show up as white dots.

  7. phail hack tbh. the end is obviously fake as #5 has pointed out, and the obvious most every camera worth a damn (and paparazzi tend to have the best of the best) will have said filter …. so the best you will give them are 2 nice glowy spots on the sides of your tacky specs. if that

  8. I just tried this with a bunch of LEDs, it didn’t jam the camera or even glare out the test image. Either the LEDs weren’t bright enough or it doesn’t work. I’ll try some brighter LEDS(maybe even fricking luxeon LEDs).

    BTW did I mention this guy censored my comment when asked where the LEDs were obtained?

  9. Heh, it’s not a fake hack, it just doesn’t work with alot of cameras because they have IR filters.

    This would be extremely effective against night cameras which use IR spotlights to discreetly light an area to the camera.

  10. The concept is great, just used for the wrong thing this is more of a “Anti-Big Brother” type thing.
    As some have stated, this I really infective against your common photo type cameras, they have Ir filters.
    What this is great for are ‘Low Light’ cameras, i.e. security cameras, they usually use Ir lamps for illumination at night.

  11. You guys totally posted something exactly like this a few months ago. I’ve been trying to find it but I can’t seem to get the right post. It was the same thing except the guy used goggles or something.

  12. Ignoring IR filters, the LEDs would only show up as small white dots – just as high brightness white LEDs would.

    This could /possibly/ work on a security cam set up for night vision with IR, but you’d need a fuckton of LEDs, and at night, you’d just make yourself MORE visible, not less, probably.

    The hack is fake, as previously stated. Why hasn’t this post been edited to say that? The whole Pentium drink warmer post was corrected pretty quick.

    As for autofocus – some cameras use IR rangefinding for autofocus. That’s why it would mess with the autofocus. The IR autofocuses don’t like windows either, cause of reflection.

  13. Good Idea. I think I’d make it just because it’s interesting. I have a camera that I removed the IR filter from, so this might be interesting to test it against that a normal camera with filer. Anyway, the video you embedded has been removed from Medacafe so here’s another one.

  14. Tried to make this,even with four IR LEDS, didn’t work. Am I using IR leds not powerful enough? or is this video a fake?

    Can someone tell me if this is possible and where I can find the correct LED’s?

  15. Since this really only works with low-light cameras, what about using the same idea, but with a different (perhaps illegal, but that’s not the point :P ) implementation: installing several inside your car’s license plate holder (around the license plate). You could power them off the car’s 12v signal, and I’m thinking it would effectively white your license plate for any type of traffic monitoring camera.

    The problem I see is knowing how a person could test this without knowing exactly what type of cameras are being used.

  16. I did something similar to this about a month ago. I used twelve IR LEDs in throwie form to blot out the identities of myself and five friends during a mostly harmless prank on my high school. The viewing angle must’ve been very broad, because nobody got any flack for it and no security pictures were used to fuel the subsequent manhunt.

    For those interested, we were bonding traffic cones to the middles of a row of desirable parking spaces that the student council had greedily reserved for themselves.

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