Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

Of course, maybe you’re one of those people who thinks that a high-tech pair of night vision goggles strapped to your head actually makes you look cool. (See previous post.) But not necessarily cool enough to warrant dropping thousands of dollars on a pair, just so you can see who’s knocking over your garbage cans at night. In that case you might be interested in these Eyeclops Night Vision Goggles from Jakks Pacific. While they’re actually designed for kids, they apparently use real infra-red technology to provide up to 50 feet of visibility even in complete darkness. Now I’m sure they don’t perform as well as military-spec night vision gear, but with a supposed price tag of just $79.99 this Fall, who cares?

And seriously, if you thought The Great Office War couldn’t get any more awesome, imagine if all the lights were off and everyone had to play while wearing these.

[ Gearlog - Jakks Eyeclops Night Vision Goggles ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Have you ever wanted the ability to see what’s going on at night, but without looking like a dork because you have a set of night vision goggles strapped to your head? Enter the Infra-Red Personal Night Viewer which seems to do everything your standard set of night vision goggles does, except that it can be carried in your hand.

In order to see the illuminated results the viewer has a built-in 3.5 inch, 500 line resolution display that shows things in black and white, instead of the green hue traditionally associated with night vision gear. Or, you can hook it up to an external monitor via a composite video connection. It has 32 brightness steps so the image an be adjusted based on the ambient light conditions and is powered by 8 AA batteries. (Or a Nickel Metal Hydride battery pack.)

It’s available from Spycatcheronline.co.uk for about $800.

[ DV Infra-Red Personal Night Viewer ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While it appears to be considerably larger than most pens, I think if you were discreet enough you could probably get away with using this DVR Pen Recorder. It comes with either 2GB or 4GB of flash memory that allows it to capture up to 30 hours of audio and video. (With the 4GB model.) The resolution is just 352×288, which is what you’d expect from a spy pen that wasn’t created by the CIA, NSA or MI6. But since those organizations don’t sell their custom gear in their gift shops, or even have gift shops for that matter, this is as good as you’re going to find online.

The DVR Pen Recorder also pulls apart to reveal a standard USB 2 connection which allows you to transfer the videos to your PC, and charge the internal battery. And while it can capture about 30 hours of video, the battery will actually only last for about 2 hours. The 2GB model will set you back $199.95 while the 4GB is $249.95, and both are available from BrickHouseSecurity.com.

[ DVR Pen Camera Recorder With Audio And Video Recording ] VIA [ Chip Chick ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The next time you break into someone’s home or office and notice an adapter plugged into the wall that’s missing a cord, you might want to think about stealing that too. Because there’s a good chance it could be this fake AC adapter from Ajoka that’s recording your every move. Not surprisingly, the camera is actually powered by AC whenever the adapter is plugged into an outlet, but also features a lithium ion battery allowing it to record up to 3 hours of audio and video without an external power source.

The video and audio are recorded to a microSD card, and a 2GB card is capable of recording up to 66 hours of footage. Of course the video has a resolution of just 176×144 pixels at 15fps in the 3GP format, so unless the perp walks right up to the lens and look into it, there’s a good chance it will be hard to recognize anyone’s face.

[ Charger DVR ] VIA [ Chip Chick ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Seeing how small digital video spy cameras have become is not as impressive as it used to be. But seeing where people try to hide those cameras is still pretty entertaining. A company called Ajoka has managed to integrate one into a fairly normal looking belt buckle. While the 176×144 pixel 3GP videos it captures fall well below even YouTube quality, they only weigh in at about 500kb per minute. So when capturing to a 2GB MicroSD card that equals about 65 hours of video. It’s just too bad that current battery technologies limit the actual recording time to about 3 hours on a single charge.

On the bottom edge of the buckle you’ll find the MicroSD card slot, a record button, a power switch allowing you to conserve battery life and a USB port for downloading the video files to your PC. Since it’s self-contained and doesn’t broadcast the video or audio signals the belt buckle spy camera won’t be picked up by a wireless camera detector, so the only people you’d have to worry about is the fashion police. I just hope the camera uses a wide-angle lens because I’m not sure if secret footage of someone else’s crotch will hold up in court.

[ Belt Buckle DVR With Camera ] VIA [ Spy Review ]

By Andrew Liszewski

The Teleport 2.0 is an innocuous looking device which allows a telephone to be connected to a PC via USB. Using a Windows-only piece of software called Paliha-Teleport, the PC can then be used to not only record logs of incoming and outgoing calls but can also be used to record entire conversations as an audio file. There have been a few times when I’ve conducted telephone interviews and a device like this would have been extremely handy for recording the other person’s answers, instead of me having to furiously type away in the background.

And of course there’s the obvious spy-related uses as well, whether you’re trying to monitor your employees, kids or anyone else you think is out to get you. The Teleport 2.0 works with touch-tone or pulse dialing phones, can also be used to dial numbers stored in your PC’s phone book and is compatible with Russian and American caller ID standards. So whether you’re a KGB or CIA agent, this device should work for you.

It’s available on the Art. Lebedev Studio website for about $71.

[ Teleport 2.0 ] VIA [ Spy Review ]