TKKOK D80 Night Vision Binoculars - Review

17 Jan 2022

The prize for the Spy Nerd contest finally made it here after a convoluted courier trek. I made an unboxing video and then realized I needed to understand it a bit better, so I did a bit of a review video.

I had fun learning how this instrument works. It performs better than I expected and has a fairly powerful zoom capability. I do not have any software that can view IR images captured by the camera yet (they have some odd format) but the captured IR videos are viewable in VLC. Overall a very interesting prize.

Top Comments

dougw over 3 years ago in reply to scottiebabe +1

I think I figured it out. My batteries were a bit weak and the IR illuminator was causing a power brownout glitch while saving the IR image. This corrupted the jpeg. Running from a solid power supply everything…

Parents

scottiebabe over 3 years ago

Mine powered up with only 4 AA. It also appears to implement power path management and powers off the USB C port when connected to a power source.

Sometimes it forgets the IR filter isn't in the optical path on power up and the color photos look purple
- Cancel
- Vote Up 0 Vote Down
- Sign in to reply
- More
- Cancel
dougw over 3 years ago in reply to scottiebabe

Yes, mine definitely runs well off the USB C port when the batteries are depleted and even when they are not depleted. I will have to check if the two battery banks are separate with one set only used for IR illumination.

What viewer software do you use for IR images?
- Cancel
- Vote Up 0 Vote Down
- Sign in to reply
- More
- Cancel
scottiebabe over 3 years ago in reply to dougw

My IR images just show up as ordinary jpegs:

There is 500 - N, preallocated files in the photo directory, but they don't have an image extension.

I seem to have better luck garbing a video frame for an image versus taking a photo as I can pick a frame where the camera shake isn't noticeable.
- Cancel
- Vote Up 0 Vote Down
- Sign in to reply
- More
- Cancel
dougw over 3 years ago in reply to scottiebabe

My IR images have a .jpg extension, but are not readable by any viewer I have, and I have quite a few. The color images are fine on every viewer.
- Cancel
- Vote Up 0 Vote Down
- Sign in to reply
- More
- Cancel

Comment

dougw over 3 years ago in reply to scottiebabe

My IR images have a .jpg extension, but are not readable by any viewer I have, and I have quite a few. The color images are fine on every viewer.
- Cancel
- Vote Up 0 Vote Down
- Sign in to reply
- More
- Cancel

Children

scottiebabe over 3 years ago in reply to dougw

Not sure, there may be a FW bug buried and you happened to discover it. I noticed every image has the exact same file size. Perhaps there is a bug creating exact file size jpegs, not sure.

The IR image 2 posts up, was just drag-and-drop into chrome.
- Cancel
- Vote Up 0 Vote Down
- Sign in to reply
- More
- Cancel
dougw over 3 years ago in reply to scottiebabe

Yes, mine are all the same size as yours, but dragging into Chrome doesn't work.
- Cancel
- Vote Up 0 Vote Down
- Sign in to reply
- More
- Cancel
scottiebabe over 3 years ago in reply to dougw

Playing around earlier I did end up with a bad image file

Not sure how, only guess I have is the image was overexposed. Perhaps only largely dark images work, I don't know. That's annoying.
- Cancel
- Vote Up 0 Vote Down
- Sign in to reply
- More
- Cancel
dougw over 3 years ago in reply to scottiebabe

I think I figured it out. My batteries were a bit weak and the IR illuminator was causing a power brownout glitch while saving the IR image. This corrupted the jpeg. Running from a solid power supply everything works as expected.
- Cancel
- Vote Up +1 Vote Down
- Sign in to reply
- More
- Cancel
scottiebabe over 3 years ago in reply to dougw

Happy you found a root cause. This is good to know. Happy Spying
- Cancel
- Vote Up 0 Vote Down
- Sign in to reply
- More
- Cancel