Still waiting for that objective lens but i borrowed one from a camera for testing purposes. The aperture is way too high at F3,5-5,6 but it still sees better in the dark than naked eye.
It's not pretty but it works.

Video.

I also have to take back what i said before about it not making any noise because it does a little bit. i was not able to hear it when i tested the tube for the first time.

nice video!

seems like you get more distortion through a loupe eyepiece comparing to PVS-2 eyepiece.

to push cascade performance down to level of dark adapted eye you need to choke the lens down to f/10 or so,
thats according to my feeling.

loudness of whining is different from tube to tube, but newer ones usually are not loud.
worst one i had was an old early 80s p8079 (non HP) tube.

i have one tube with serial number over 20000 too, it does not make much noise.

where did you get the tube? starlightNV?

Thank you for the info.

Feels like the camera i'm using is amplifying the distortion. It's there and noticeable but not even close to how it looks like in the video. I'm now testing with a 50-200mm F4.0 zoom lens. Can zoom in pretty far but aperture is definitely an issue still.
Small clip with the zoom lens. Those buildings and lights are 2-4km away.

This is where i got my tube. They really shot up in price recently from what i've read.

A question or two, since you've had a few of these tubes from what i've gathered. How easy is it to cause damage to them with excessive light? I've pointed mine at some bright street lights very briefly while panning around and they leave a mark for up to 10 seconds before fading out. I believe that's not a big deal for as long as i'm not constantly pointing it at bright light sources. Also, have you noticed any degradation in performance on your tubes over time?

Will get back for at least one more post when i get the fast lens.

cannot really answer about tube damaging, because probably i am too careful with NODs, unfortunately,
but these trails from bright sources are nothing to worry about.

i live in unpopulated area, where there is no artificial light sources and even no sky glow, so my chances to damage a tube are small.
only once i got tube overloaded with light and built in emergency shutdown triggered.

one thing i would like to warn about is incandescent lamps  -  car headlights and especially these 500 watt PIR sensor activated floodlights.

have not noticed any signs of tube degradation yet.
i am reluctant to use NODs fully open in full moon conditions, dusk and dawn and in those midsummer "white nights" though.

i guess tube degradation is gradual process and it is very hard no notice without side by side comparison to some reference tube.

Thanks again.

Got the faster objective fitted today. Spent 2 hours testing it in the darkness and it's working really well so far.

This is the sort of image i'm getting during the darkest time.



A bit out of focus. Snow is providing a lot of illumination but i still could only see halfway down the road and the treeline, that's about it. The thing is really turning night into day.

The box is attached with some velcro tape for now at least. It wobbles a bit but it's not going anywhere.


Real-time voltage monitoring.


Inside the box.

I found my old project in the bottom of a box and decided to rebuild it with a nice housing.  I modeled everything in the computer and designed a lens adapter to 3d print.  Next I'm going to design a sleek battery compartment. Attached File
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I made a phone adapter from some scrap kydex.

Attached File
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^ man, thats pretty cool.

They help me figure out where to buy the P8079HP or P8079

I searched and I can not find it u.u

Pretty sure this is where we bought them. Been awhile.

Take a look back one page. We talked about using a flashlight for the battery pack. It's great and small.

I'm pretty poor but I've always wanted a nv system of some kind and the original post here says that single stage gen1 tunes can be found as cheap as $10. I didn't find anything helpful after a quick search so does anyone know where I could purchase one? It doesn't necessarily have to be a single stage gen1 tube, just the absolute cheapest one I can get anywhere please. Quality isn't a big issue to me right now and if I need I can add extra ir light for it. I just need one I can afford

I admit, I didn't read the whole thread...has anyone done their own gen 3 PVS-15s?

Amazing thread! My girlfriend is away and i've got a week off so i've been reading this for days (and drinking lots of beer of course!).
Thanks David and everyone for sharing their experiences.
I'm limited to 2000 words as a new member posting so i've just deleted my long description and boiled it down to basics :
Grade A P8079HP from ebay, £185 including P&P.
2 lenses to try, one is a 50mm/1.4 with the M43 fitting, the other is a Praktica 50mm/1.8 with a proprietary mount i think, i managed to find a mounting ring for it too.
For the housing i bought 75mm PVC pipe, it's a perfect fit for the tube, being VERY tight.
I'll be using the 75mm endcaps in the pics, the hole i cut for the c-mount/M43 adapter ring is off-centre, but i knew i'd screw up so i ordered 4 to begin with.
I cut the housing pipe to a little longer than the length of the tube, including the input lens that protrudes ever so slightly from the assembly.
Pipe and end caps are a great solution if you want something modular, just have different endcaps with different adapter rings or whatever, i didn't do a very straight cut at the eyepiece end, but because i'm using endcaps it's not a problem.
I'm using 4 NimH batteries in series that provide 7.4 volts (the P8079HP has voltage regulation so this isn't an issue - as far as i know?). Does anyone have a link to the manual that someone posted a photo of pages 12-13 from, the manual from the company that made the tube, i've searched but can't find on the net ?

I won't have all the bits and pieces until next week, i'll update the thread as i go.

Cheers n Beers :)

This is the post with a pic of a couple of pages out of the manual, does anyone have a link to the manual ?

https://www.ar15.com/forums/Armory/DIY-Cascade-Tube-Thread-/18-359614/?page=14

I'll be sticking with the recommended voltage rather than going up to 7.4, even though i've read there's a regulater in the tube, a few of the bits arrived today so i'm ready to go using the small lens, still waiting for the ring adapter for the Praktica lens.

Will wait until it's darker and hook it up to a bench psu, plan to stick a raspberry pi at the eyepiece end to see what sort of image the pi camera gets, not sure what it's minimum focus is, would be nice to have the unit skywatching in the garden while i sit on my arse indoors remotely controlling it :)

Got a temporary assembly ready to test when it gets dark. The small lens, the NimH battery pack (which turned out to be 6.7v after resting - just right), a switch for safety.
For the negative i made a ground contact ring and pigtailed it through the housing. All a bit rough at the minute but good enough for testing.
For the positive i found a 2.5mm screw fits.

Photo of ground contact ring :



Whole assembly :

hello

here is link to few more pages of info about the tube
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rnnkvasq5t6o2dy/AADmr9Ftu9FrdnRR2OohXQJpa?dl=0

yes,it is better not to exceed nominal voltage.

there are available adjustable voltage regulators,
one lithium ion cell with boost regulator would be nice option. EDIT: a lithium cell with over discharge protection.

good luck with your build!

Thanks hatti :)

The ground contact ring wasn't staying in place so i cut an acrylic ring to hold it :




I plan to use a raspberry pi with camera and motion-detection software :




A weather-proof container to hold it all in :



I'll be meteor-spotting at first :)

Turns out the camera can't focus on anything less than a few inches away so will have to adjust for distance between lens and screen or use a different camera.

HI,

WE are the company David Kitson mentioned as the supplier in the opening thread.. Down to a 1000 of these tubes. Price reduced to £150.00 around $195.00. If anyone would like a dealership to make really good money selling on ebay etc, let us know.

contact [email protected]
or [email protected]

Finally got my cascade tube together.

Thanks to all for this thread. Too bad most all the pics are gone.

I know it is a long shot, but has anyone compared one of these (performance wise) to the SiOnyx?  Trying to wrap my mind about how they might compare at a given light level.

First off! Thanks to all for this thread! This is outstanding!
I've recently been wanting to do a NVG build with older tubes and a 3D printed housing. The idea popped into my head when I was fixing the battery connector on my old Russian 1st gen cyclop scope. (Though the only way to get the tube and power supply out of the housing is to either cut the housing in half((which I would hate to do since its in great condition)) or to cut the wiring connecting the two and slide them out in opposite directions.)
Then I would need to find another tube with similar specs for the second eye.
Has anyone done anything like this? I know some have used pvs5 tubes in pvs31 or pvs15s, can't remember which.

Hi all,

This is Julian from company Starlight, we are now getting down to the last few hundred of these tubes and some other bulk items besides so we cannot afford to keep paying storage costs for them.

Therefore we have reduce the price £45 or about $60. This excludes shipping which will be international tracked and signed.

If you are interested please e-mail me at [email protected]

All tubes shipped at our risk not yours.

Thanks,

Julian.

Can SLR lenses survive recoil if you were to mount a home made night vision on a gun?

I have seen images or people using them on rifles. Never tried it myself. Hopefully CJ7hawk has and will see this.

It's a good question. They certainly are not rated for weapon shock - and would have to withstand more than 300 G's at the minimum to even have a hope of handling smaller cartridges... A Rimfire .22 or .177 would not be likely to cause damage, but unless you don't mind risking the lens, putting it on a centerfire of any caliber would be less desirable.

You might get some that survive, but generally they simply don't design them to handle those kinds of shocks, and the photography world is full of people who drop a lens and break them, so in general, I'd say it's less likely.

Regards
David