NOIR camera is "blind" in the dark

[edibusl]

Hello,
I bought an official NOIR camera module and try to show (or stream) video on my Raspberry Pi 4 (Raspberry Pi OS).
When there is light, the video looks fine (a little bit red), but when it's a little bit darker, the video is completely dark.

Am I missing something?
Attached an example of my room shot by the NOIR camera and by my smartphone.

Thanks in advance,
Edi.

[6by9]

NoIR is NOT an IR camera. It is a camera with no IR filter. If you add IR illumination then it will see it, whereas a normal colour camera won't.

Are those two images with the same lighting conditions? If so then it's possible that the AE algorithm is seeing the window and trying to compensate for that. Add "-mm spot" to the raspivid/still command line to concentrate it on the centre of the image.

[edibusl]

Those two images were shot with the same lighting conditions.
I was just wondering if the NoIR camera needs IR LEDs to give good results, while a smartphone camera shows a clear image.
It's not even complete dark, just a little bit darker than a fully bright room.

P.S. - The "-mm spot" didn't help. Also when rotating the camera to a spot without any light, like some wall, it's still gives a black image with barely any objects seen.

[jamesh]

Those two images were shot with the same lighting conditions.
I was just wondering if the NoIR camera needs IR LEDs to give good results, while a smartphone camera shows a clear image.
It's not even complete dark, just a little bit darker than a fully bright room.

P.S. - The "-mm spot" didn't help. Also when rotating the camera to a spot without any light, like some wall, it's still gives a black image with barely any objects seen.

That's not right, it should take pictures that a simply look badly colour corrected compared with a normal camera, not darker.

Are you using raspistill? What parameters?

[edibusl]

The bad image was from raspivid (a screenshot I did in a vlc stream view)
For a better comparison, I'll attach images again from raspistill and raspivid with the same lighting conditions.
The image from the smartphone looks the same as previously attached, it's just not possible to attach 4 images in a post.

Raspistill:

Code: Select all

raspistill -v -o raspistill.jpg

Raspivid:

Code: Select all

raspivid -o - -t 0 -n -mm spot | cvlc -vvv stream:///dev/stdin --sout '#rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8554/}' :demux=h264

Raspivid with ISO 800 (I tried also to play with brightness, but it doesn't really help to improve the image quality):

Code: Select all

raspivid -o - -t 0 -n -mm spot --ISO 800  | cvlc -vvv stream:///dev/stdin --sout '#rtp{sdp=rtsp://:8554/}' :demux=h264

[jamesh]

Raspivid will be running at 30fps, which limits the exposure time. Try dropping the frame rate to get longer exposure times per frame.

[edibusl]

It helped a little bit, thanks!
Anyway I think that the best option would be to get an IR LED and also to compare to a regular camera module to verify that my NoIR camera is not damaged.

Thanks for the help!

[pidd]

It helped a little bit, thanks!
Anyway I think that the best option would be to get an IR LED and also to compare to a regular camera module to verify that my NoIR camera is not damaged.

Thanks for the help!

Try using an IR TV remote control if you have one handy, it should be just visible with your phone camera but appear like a torch on the NoIR