Budget night vision

[ken792]

I’ve used actual military NV before (whatever the MD National Guard was using around 2000), and it’s really good stuff. Like others have said, you get what you pay for. The inexpensive stuff requires active IR illumination just to be able to see anything, it’s horrible.
It really is worth saving up for something good. Just be aware that NV is a consumable device. The tubes they use only have so many hours of useful life in them, so no matter what you get you should only use it when you need to.

US military requirements for Gen 3 tubes has been to last at least 10k hours before performance drops below the level the military seems acceptable. Testing shows that they can last way longer than that. At 10k hours, you could use it for eight hours a night, every night, for three years and five months. I use mine whenever I can just because I already spent the money on it, so I will try to get my money’s worth. My friend uses his to let his dog out at night so he can see her.

They are, of course, still somewhat usable after the brightness dips below that level if you don’t care about mil spec.

Night vision has improved greatly since 2000 in terms of technology too. Back then, they didn’t have autogated power supplies, unfilmed tubes, or thin filmed tubes.

The tubes can die from the power supply failing or the iridium seal failing and allowing oxygen in, but that’s just more reason to get the use out of it and not let it die of old age. The vast majority of tubes that fail will do so in the first year of use, and L3 and Elbit both have factory warranties on the tubes long enough to cover that. I know plenty of people still using 20-30 year old tubes in PVS-7s that, while primitive by modern standards, still let them see at night.

All the top builders of commercial night vision now have ten year warranties on the tubes in their units, so don’t be afraid to really use them hard.

 

[smokey]

interesting take from a random internet person...
https://www.facebook.com/That-sling-guy-who-gives-excessively-detailed-gun-advice-108429898151692

Why night vision (and especially thermal) suck for home defense and positively identifying human individuals.
"It's stupid to put a light on your gun, you should just use night vision or thermal for home defense!"
~tech enthusiasts with little to no training who are are so enamored with technology that they can't think critically about the subject.
No.
Night vision and thermal are great for hunting. NVG's are great for military use in a wide variety of contexts.
But your home isn't the same as patrolling streets in the middle east. Your living room isn't Kabul. Your hallway isn't the woods on a hog hunt. And your family members aren't wearing IR IFF tags.
Let's kick this off with an inflammatory statement:
Night vision and thermal imaging suck.
"Wow, Sling Guy, that's a hell of a statement. How in the world will you defend that statement?"
Night vision and thermal imaging are only useful because high end forms of these technological innovations are good enough that they become the least-bad way to see in the dark in certain situations where other means of seeing things, such as visible light, struggle to be useful, especially in the context of long range vision, outdoor use, and a context where your team has night vision and the enemy doesn't have night vision. But being the least-bad way to see doesn't mean they don't have a bunch of pretty hefty disadvantages, especially in a home defense context.
In this way, using night vision is kinda like wearing a SCUBA suit. The entire ensemble is clunky, expensive, a pain to work with, and generally just sucks. But if you want to breath underwater, a SCUBA apparatus is kinda the least-bad way to breathe underwater for more than a couple minutes. But nobody chooses to wear a SCUBA apparatus above water in lieu of just breathing normally, without needing the tank, regulator, etc.
Likewise, night vision is a modestly niche product, with a hefty pricetag and a litany of disadvantages, resulting in an ensemble that nobody would willingly subject themselves to if they could just see with their eyes normally.
Nobody who has used NVG's and/or thermal extensively would choose them over normal visible light if normal visible light were a viable option. Nobody who understands this subject matter would choose night vision goggles for home defense, given that a simple weapon light accomplishes that goal far better. Or your house lights. Or a remote that turns on your house lights.
Your eyes and your brain work amazingly well when given normal visual input with visible light. So you should embrace and make use of that incredible ability to see things with visible light.
So why do goggles suck for home defense?
1) Slow to put on. NVG's aren't a fast-access item that you quickly slap on your face. NVG's are donned administratively, not once you are already in the throes of a defensive encounter.
2) Severely limited field of view and peripheral vision. This can be mitigated by increasing your NVG budget tenfold, but you still won't have a field of view equal to your real vision.
3) Weight and where that weight is. 27 ounces for a GPNVG setup, and 11 ounces for a monocular PVS-14. On a gun, that much weight would be a little hefty. On a plate carrier, that much weight might be negligible. But when attached to your head, you really notice it.
4) A litany of issues and considerations related to how you see through your goggles and then through your optic to aim your gun. For this reason, because using an optic can be a difficult affair, many users instead fall back to an inferior aiming implement: IR lasers. I also have a post on this topic, but lasers are not a good aiming implement. They are useful in the context of NVG's precisely because NVG's make it harder to use any of the better aiming implements. Again, the SCUBA analogy.
5) Night vision significantly impairs your ability to quickly, intuitively, and definitively recognize human faces. Thermal nearly eliminates that option altogether. This is the deathknell for NVG's and thermal in the context of civilian self defense.
You see, worrying about identifying specific human individuals' faces isn't a major concern in the military. Your allies are all wearing standardized gear and you all have IR IFF tags, making it relatively easy to tell when somebody is a friend or not. But how easy is it to tell James from Kyle under night vision by looking at their face from 10 yards? Not very easy. But you don't need to quickly be able to recognize faces, precisely because the IR IFF tag already tells you not to shoot them.
In a hunting context, this also doesn't matter. You don't need to recognize human faces because you simply know not to shoot at any human at all. The target is hogs or whatever other animal you are hunting. So the impeded ability to differentiate your brother from your friend from your other friend doesn't matter, because it's still easy to tell the difference between a human (not a target) and a hog (target).
But in home defense, being able to have unimpeded vision, to immediately recognize human faces to differentiate one human from another human, that is a primary task your eyes have for home defense.
Under thermal, that 5'7" human figure in your house that looks like it has a massive erection might be your son, who is up in the middle of the night for teenage boy reasons, headed to the bathroom. Or, that 5'7" human figure might be a rapist, headed toward your daughter's room. Or maybe it's just Tristan again, going for round two of bad poetry. But without the ability to immediately recognize that face (which can be difficult under night vision under stress, and incredibly difficult under thermal, even in good conditions), you can't easily tell the difference between your son, a criminal, and your daughter's boyfriend Tristan.
And yes, quality night vision is far better at this than thermal is. But most people don't get a $40,000 GPNVG set. Most get some surplus PVS model, or quite possibly even worse. And while you can definitely recognize faces under night vision, it isn't nearly as easy or as intuitive as it is when using your own eyeballs and visible light.
It is difficult to properly communicate just how much biological RAM our brains put into recognizing human faces and just how good they are at it under normal conditions with normal visible light. Under normal light, recognizing faces happens almost immediately, as a background process that you don't even consciously recognize is happening.
Under night vision, that process needs to be brought to the forefront, for you to more consciously put in effort to determine who it is you are looking at.
Under thermal, you're sitting there doing calculus in your head as you consciously try to figure out what the inhuman heatmap you're looking at means with respect to people you know.
As an additional nail in the coffin for NVG's for home defense: NVG's get undermined if one of your family members flicks a light switch or simply left a light switch on. Or if the criminal flicked the lights on, because criminals definitely aren't bringing NVG's, because if they could afford NVG's, they wouldn't be breaking into homes.
So put lights on your home defense guns. It is your responsibility, as a responsible gun owner and home defender, to verify and identify the target before you put lead into a human being. And just because you can see that the target is indeed a human being with NVG's doesn't mean that you have identified which human individual you are looking at.
Leave the thermal optics for hunting and leave the NVG's for- hmm, how shall I say this in a way that won't get me zucced? -for offensive social work in a societally-challenged context.

 

[DEVE]

US military requirements for Gen 3 tubes has been to last at least 10k hours before performance drops below the level the military seems acceptable. Testing shows that they can last way longer than that. At 10k hours, you could use it for eight hours a night, every night, for three years and five months. I use mine whenever I can just because I already spent the money on it, so I will try to get my money’s worth. My friend uses his to let his dog out at night so he can see her.

They are, of course, still somewhat usable after the brightness dips below that level if you don’t care about mil spec.

Night vision has improved greatly since 2000 in terms of technology too. Back then, they didn’t have autogated power supplies, unfilmed tubes, or thin filmed tubes.

The tubes can die from the power supply failing or the iridium seal failing and allowing oxygen in, but that’s just more reason to get the use out of it and not let it die of old age. The vast majority of tubes that fail will do so in the first year of use, and L3 and Elbit both have factory warranties on the tubes long enough to cover that. I know plenty of people still using 20-30 year old tubes in PVS-7s that, while primitive by modern standards, still let them see at night.

All the top builders of commercial night vision now have ten year warranties on the tubes in their units, so don’t be afraid to really use them hard.

Good stuff to know, thank you.

 

[cobra]

I have the night vision binoculars from the link to Sharper Image. Had them for several months with no issues.
For under 160 bucks bucks they are fine for watching around the house, spotting animals,ect.
I use mine to hunts rats when needed.
Set up is 22 cal pellet gun with red light mounted over scope. Night vision is used to spot rat, click on light as they are not alarmed by red light. That allows me a bright clear site picture thru scope and take shot.