Had a half hour to kill today so I prototyped a few different IR flashers and IR adjustable brightness circuits (not shown). Ofc I used red less since it's day time. It's still a work in progress as eventually I'm going to make little project cases for these and use them as strobes. Hope you like and any suggestions please tell.

I have a bunch of high power ir diodes to use. This is run off 9v but I'll probably step it up w a battery pack to really get some bright strobe.

Great idea for DIY projects.
Many LED flasher ICs are available.
If I were making some, I would buy high quality capacitors for it. Good ones are not expensive. That is the part likely to fail with age or due to temperature extremes.
I buy my components from Digikey and Mouser (mostly). There is no minimum order, and shipping is fast and reasonable.
BTW, the invisible 980/990 nm LEDs work just fine with all of my NV stuff, even though the NV specs indicate that 880-ish nm is the upper limit.
So, if you want to avoid the visible red glow from your flasher, you might wish to give those a try.

And, for what it's worth, your cell phone camera can probably see the IR. With that method you don't have to hide in the dark closet with NVG to confirm it works.
Haji and others use cell phones and digital cameras/video cameras to see IR light sources approaching.

The ones I have don't glow red so they must be really up in there. Soldered a board up right quick and it's a winner. Totally stoked to keep  coming up w better designs and brighter strobe.

Cool project.

I've always thought that IR flashers, like most everything in the NV game, are way overpriced.  I'll be doing this too.

What is the application for flashing IR?

IFF markers, marking your car/camp/SO so you can find it again.

 

 

interesting i tried something like this a while back but didnt get too far. i was looking at some thing like this with a switch to be able to program different strobe patterns.
http://www.laureanno.com/RC/picaxe-miniflasher.html

 




 

https://www.google.com/search?q=led+flasher&biw=1366&bih=625&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=x1DOVMyhB5L3oASW-ILwDQ&sqi=2&ved=0CE8QsAQ&dpr=1#imgdii=_&imgrc=HEkgS6sZDHqaYM%253A%3BZcU-3VSropqsKM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fjasonacox.com%252Fimages%252Fsimple-flasher.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.jasonacox.com%252Fwordpress%252F%253Fp%253D47%3B237%3B257

The above is about as simple a flasher as one can find, not very bright though.

 


 

Not sure what you are saying?

It is called a "relaxation oscillator".

Glad to see you put something like this together.  I'd been toying with doing one with surface mount components to make it nice and tiny but haven't gotten to it.

 

I have not played with it much, but that circuit with those values gives a flash about every 2 seconds. I used a 940nm LED which is not the best for brightness so you might get better performance with one in the 800nm range. It has very  low current drain, I ran one on 8-AA's for about 5 months.