ted's hardware

For a shocking night time experience.

NiteBite is based on a military night vision periscope still used today in tanks and other armored vehicles around the world. Its heart consists of two Philips XX1080 image intensifier tubes which provide true binocular vision unlike most other night vision devices. These late model 1st generation tubes allow operation in near total darkness without the need of additional IR illumination.

Experimenting with night vision devices was always high on the to-do list of mrpain and me. However obtaining an interesting periscope like this proved to be not that easy. Luckily mrpain knows the interweb like the inside of his fridge and his researching skills reach far beyond his morning stretch. Before long he managed to get in contact with some dude, who knew a guy in the UK having several of these periscopes. A deal for a set of three was made and one week later the heavy box arrived.

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Materials used
- 2 Philips XX1080 tubes
- Two 50mm F1.0 objective lenses
- Two 16mm wide-field eyepiece
- original 14kV psu
- 4mm Plexiglas
- PVC tubing

Building
The original periscope already had all the necessary components for a working night vision device. There was only one problem: it weighed over 12 kg and it needed a 24V input voltage. Not quite portable and suitable for night trips into the nearby swamps. In order to make a portable device, the periscope needed to be stripped down to extract all necessary parts. It was a delight to see how well and robust the periscope was constructed.

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There is no technical documentation available about this periscope as it is military equipment and therefore information about it is classified. For determining the correct distance between the objective lenses, eyepieces and tube for example, a test setup was made as can be seen on the first picture. Every step had to be carefully reversed-engineered and spare parts were almost impossible to find. Fortunately mrpain managed to get his eager little hands on some top notch XX1080 tubes.

Decisions were made to keep some of the original mountings as can be seen on the pictures. Mrpain did an excellent job modifying the tube mounting and in particular the objective lenses bracket. For him a screaming grinder spinning at 5K revolutions while touching metal must be music to his ears as he was man-handling that bracket with a big smile on his face.

Some 4mm Plexiglas was used to create a cover and to hold everything together. Hazardous electric parts were covered by PVC tubing as 14kV can give a nasty bite like I discovered during a night test trip. Hence the name NiteBite.

The eyepieces as well as the objective lenses are made adjustable in order to focus the image. Pictures show the final result; a compact and reliable night vision binocular based on the successful XX1080 image intensifier tube.

So far only the mechanical part is done. The electrical part still needs to be finished and implemented into the design.

To-do list:
- design/fabricate a PSU based on the MC34063A switcher IC (set-up from 4.8V to 24V)
- microcontroller regulated closing/opening of the iris of the objective lenses using a photo-sensor
- wire all components
- paintjob: black /camo

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