Montana Ghost Hunter

So I’ve been kicking around the idea of building a ‘ghost beacon‘. The concept is something that flashes in the IR and UV light spectrum, that might be able to attract some spirit activity. Does this work? Who knows, but it sounded fun and nerdy, so I’m all over it.

I was looking around for various schematics on how to do this, but I stumbled across a great kit at BG Micro, that I thought would be perfect. The kit was the Tiny Cylon kit. Normally, this uses 5 small red LEDs and a 555 IC chip pre-programmed to display various light patterns. I thought it would be cool to replace some of the LEDs with IR and UV LEDs.

The kit comes non-assembled (basically a circuit board, resister, switch, IC and 5 red LEDs). I also purchased a few 940nm/50 degree LEDs and a few T1-3/4 UV LEDs. The UVs are a bit pricey at $1.49 ea, but these IRs are on .20 ea. I would probably try ones with greater degree though. The 940nm make it completely invisible to the human eye though.

The kit is very easy to assemble, just add the components and start soldering! The kit comes with a battery pack (3 AAA batteries) with postive/negative leads so you need to solder those as well.

I initially had some trouble powering the unit. Doing a quick check with my volt meter, I noticed that something was ‘off’ with my incoming power supply. Re-seating the batteries in this case fixed the problem. You can use the switch to change light modes. I believe there are 5 or 6 different modes.

I posted a small video at YouTube showing you how the lights work, etc. You can see it below:

Please let me know what you think, or if you have any suggestions, tips, etc. You can also get a hold of me on Twitter now as well!