How to find hidden cameras (2002) [pdf]
tentacle.franken.de
tentacle.franken.de
As for the info on RF detection, nope. Few things use PAL/NTSC now, mostly devices bought by people not doing research buying the tales spun by the cheaper spy shops. If you find something using analog video, I'd treat it as suspicious. If the device isn't obviously doing spy things, it's probably some completely forgotten-about system not connected to anything anymore.
You'd be better served doing analog Wi-Fi RF analysis - whether just figuring out "why is there a gigantic 2.4GHz/5.8GHz/etc signal specifically in the corner of this room", or even seeing whether the camera firmware is vulnerable to the WPA2 attacks. And that's hoping the device uses Wi-Fi; if it uses a LAN, your best bet may be an EM/RF finder (which AFAIK start at $900+ for a basic good one) to try and pinpoint the camera electronics, and hope you don't get distracted with random benign things like in-wall thermometers, chemical sensors, and whatnot.
As for modern camera size, I just did an image search for "phone camera module" and then "tiny camera module" and found items quite a fair bit smaller than what's shown in this PDF.
- This is apparently 1x1mm, and a cursory but careful examination suggests it's _not_ optical: http://www.awaiba.com/product/naneye/
- A bit more looking found this slightly more accessible random option: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/1-12-CMOS-tiny-indust...
- I also found this generic "MC900A" camera that's very small, self-contained and spits out NTSC/PAL: http://spy.tips/shop/super-mini-520tvl-high-resolution-audio... (this is one of the random results, googling the model will find tons of this)
- A bit more searching found the TS5828 5.8GHz A/V transmitter; this is not _tiny_, but it most definitely is very small.
One of my rainy-day-when-I-have-more-money projects is to get a tiny camera like one of the ones above, a transmitter like the one above, and a tiny rechargeable battery, and see how compact I can make the result. I'm putting it off until I have more money because I know I'll obsess about it until it's _really, really small_...
FWIW, what I just described does already exist as a finished product. Here's a 2.4GHz version: https://www.selfdefensegearco.com/MiniWirelessSpyCamera.htm
How often do you really pay attention to screws?
I’d like to imagine someone install one of these in the middle of an otherwise clean white wall, where it’ll stick out like a sore thumb :p
- There ain't that many things with visible, people-facing screws these days.
- Even if you found one (e.g. a back of a LCD screen), you'd have to match the screw in size and color, or it would stick out.
I guess this method is best used when you control the entire object in which a screw-camera is to be embedded.
I can imagine it's got a pinhole and a CCD, which is why there have to be four powerful LEDs illuminating the vicinity for it to reach the 44fps framerate without everything being just noise.
I wind up with about 20mm vertically and 30mm horizontally to work with when you count the space used by the flatbed.
What about a 2MP ESP8266-based Arducam? Lay it flat, use a tiny mirror to get the image ahead. Power it by the rails. Only slightly larger than a standard N-scale boxcar. http://www.arducam.com/world-smallest-esp8266-wifi-camera/
I'm an old model RRer myself. Hobby was just too expensive though.
I wonder how many videos I have appeared in as a background character of someone's Facebook video. All that data is waiting to be processed one day so the schedule of my whole life is pieced together statistically from the mountains of raw data accumulated over the decades by companies.
But it's just not used often enough anymore for public photos; everyone's shots go to the Google Maw or the Apple Pit, never to be seen by the public.
This one is about $8 https://www.banggood.com/600TVL-8_0MP-14-2_8mm-CMOS-FPV-170-...
How about this one for $22 with a 5.8GHz transmitter https://www.banggood.com/Eachine-TX01S-NTSC-Mini-5_8G-40CH-2...
Those are available because a segment of the market still wants new cameras for their old systems. If you don't belong to that segment, various other options are available as well: SDI (digital-over-coax, good upgrade path from an analogue system), Ethernet, ...
And if you want low latency? Unless you look for expensive equipment, analog is way lower latency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_junction_detector#Co...
(specifically the CIA's SRT-107: http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/ec/srt107/index.htm)
As an aside, the entire website for that second link is pretty interesting.
I think it's a good idea, but especially in cases of non-continuous monitoring (e.g. 1 FPS or way less) with modern low power electronics this could become quite difficult.
Better yet, would be a law passed that outlaws photographing people without their consent, at least while at work. I heard France has strict laws that protect privacy.
I've never liked my picture taken without my consent.
You can't reasonably expect someone photographing a public place to announce to everyone they're about to take a photograph, or get a waiver from everyone, or blur the faces of everyone who they can't get to sign.
Cameras with built-in DSP and WIFI probably won't fit into that power envelope, though.
Then there's the difference between a live camera and a recorded camera.
Anyway, that's one of the search terms you'll want to use if you research this.
The system worked by exploiting the fact that all cameras at that time, including phone cameras, had a IR filter over the sensor that was a retro-reflector at IR wavelengths.
Behind the screen at three separated places were three IR sources and detector cameras.
If the detector cameras at the same points as the sources saw a bright dot from any two of the three locations that was coming back from the illuminator (the light was modulated so we could determine if it was ours) we knew we had a camera!
The system worked, but deployment in theaters never happened in a big way, other than a few theaters used for screenings in LA.