Most phone cameras have pretty steep IR cut filters these days. The front camera on most phones still don't, so you have to use that.
That said, most of these spy cameras don't have IR illuminators...
That said, most of these spy cameras don't have IR illuminators...
Somewhere in my HN comment history from a while back is a response to a person claiming that modern phone cameras can’t detect IR illumination and remotes.
I took a bunch of modern iPhones and Android phones, from colleagues in an IT dept, and demonstrated they can in fact see a bunch of different IR remotes and illuminators with the rear camera.
I could find zero cameras that could not see the IR.
I’m not sure where people got the notion they couldn’t.
My cell phone's back camera will show IR light from IR remote controls (I've used it for just that to verify that a remote is transmitting). But I also have an outdoor IP camera with IR illumination in my back yard. The same cell phone camera sees zero IR emitted from the outdoor IP camera (even though it quite well lights up a fairly broad area of the yard at night).
So for my phone, if a 'spy cam' were using the IR wavelength the IP camera uses, I would never know it was present by using the phone camera. If it used something closer to the wavelength used by IR remotes, yes, then the 'spy cam' would light up via the phone camera.
I make IR devices. My phone is the only one in the warehouse that can pick up their emissions - everyone else's cameras have IR filters with what appears to be a sharp ~750nm cutoff. I'm the only one that will pick up 800-1064nm with my cheap Samsung, and so I'm the only one doing the testing on those diode assemblies.
I should also mention that both IR illuminators and TV remotes are usually either 850nm or 940nm, I have not looked into that aspect of it. I imagine that it's possible that your camera can detect one but not the other...
Both front and rear cameras work.
The light shows up as a pinkish purple.
My Google Pixel 8a doesn't show anything on either camera, but my friend's front camera did! It shows up light purple.