Public Lab near infrared imaging project

The Public Lab near infrared imaging project is an open source community effort to modify consumer cameras to capture near infrared imagery for a range of purposes. All open or accessible near infrared imaging hardware and software efforts are welcome here!

Join in by:

• Reading about goals and asking great questions
• Building a basic spectrometer using one of our starter kits
• Trying (and critiquing) our community-made how-to guides
• Posting your own how-to guides and mods
• Building on others’ work; hack and remix the kits to refine and expand them
• (proposed?) Submit your improvements for inclusion in an upcoming starter kit release or add-on
• (proposed?) Serve on a Research Review Group for a 3 month period

Goals

Infrared photography can help you assess a plant's health. Infrared imagery for agricultural and ecological assessment is usually captured from satellites and planes, and the information is used mainly by large farms, vineyards, and academic research projects. For example, see this illustrated PDF from a commercial imagery provider who has been studying the usefulness of infrared imagery and has quotes from farmers who make use of it. There are public sources of infrared photography for the US available through the Department of Agriculture -- NAIP and Vegscape -- but this imagery is not collected when, as often, or at useable scale for individuals who are managing small plots.

As an open source project, however, we welcome any open source work which helps to expand the abilities of people using DIY near infrared imaging tools. The following section includes experiments which build towards specific goals of measuring environmental problems, as well as experiments which help build basic skills, refine and improve common underlying techniques, and even educational or exploratory goals.