A few nights a week someone in the building across the way shines a green laser onto the body of my young female neighbor as she walks through her apartment. It is quite annoying and even a bit scary.
What is the most clever method that could be employed to locate the source of the laser so that the harassment could be reported to police in a meaningful way?
Is there any technical instrumentation that could be employed to locate the source?
Binoculars?
Digital camera with telephoto lens?
Green lasers are generally bright enough to see the beam reflecting off of dust in the air. I’d try taking an over-exposed photo with a digital camera and seeing if it could capture the beam.
Try a handheld mirror. Once she gets lased, reflect it and try and get the reflection to go back to the source. Maybe practice with a cheap laser pointer.
Next time she sees it on her, puff some baby powder in the air to determine the direction. That or Beowulff’s idea. Or just put an HD video camera pointing out the window and change the contrast or brightness settings in a media player and look for a bright spot.
Better than a handheld mirror would be a corner mirror, which would automatically reflect it straight back at the source, without needing to aim.
Given that green lasers usually leave a very bright “trail” of reflection off any dust in the air (they’re often used to point out stars in the sky for stargazers for this reason), I would think it’d be a very simple matter to just look and see where it’s coming from.
Don’t use binoculars. You can seriously damage your eyes looking at a laser through binoculars.
Has she talked to the police about this yet? What details do they need to know about the harassment?
For example, she might want to start noting dates and times, to give them an idea of frequency.
They might also be interested in her information in case others are reporting the same thing.
Finding the person who is doing this is not her responsibility. More information helps, but telling the authorities will also help.
Just thought of something else, if it doesn’t stop, or as above, record the times it happens, just tell the FAA about it, say that you fear this person is doing this, they might not have any inhibitions about shining it at an airplane. Last resort of course, but i highly doubt making a report like that will not turn a head or two.
It depends on the power of the laser. Most are very low powered that you cannot see the beam unless you smoke/dust it. This may be the case. There are more powerful lasers (like mine) that the beam can be seen as is.
As suggested, you need to smoke/dust it when it happens and orientate the beam to its source.
Your friend can put some retroreflectors in her window. This would be like bicycle reflectors, or stickers with reflective properties. When the trespasser shines his laser at the window the retroreflector will shine the laser right back into his eyes.
The problem with trying to reflect it back is that the projected spot is really quite unlikely to be motionless enough to get a mirror under it - also, green lasers can be bright enough to cause sight damage almost instantly - so really, the first thing you should ever do when you think someone is shining a laser at you is to drop your gaze and shield your eyes (i.e. not look around and try to figure out where it’s coming from).
Involve the police - let them figure it out.
Boy, I’m reluctant to tell you ways to trace the beam back to the source, because they’re a.) multistep processes that can be confusing and b.) as noted, the laser beam itslf can be harmful if you look directly into it, causing eye damage.
as people have suggested, you can use a retroreflector (Chronos’s corner – properly a “corner cube”, although Kingslake testily insisted it’s a “cube corner”; but a bike reflector is easier and cheaper to find) , but that really won’t help you to find the source of the light. It’ll just send it back whence it came, and leave you none the wiser.
You could build yourself a sighting device with parallel panes of glass or plastic . When the beam hits it you line it up so that the spots all hit the panes at the same relative point. Then your axis will be directed along the direction of the beam. But building this is a pain in the neck, it’s bulky, you probably won’t have it with you, and your harasser probably won’t let you fiddle with it to find him.
Best would be a camera with a filter that heavily filters out the laser wavelength, and ideally lets everything else in. You look at your monitor while you move the camera around until you center the filtered laser spot in the field of view. Your camera is now pointed at the source of the beam. You can use a cell phone and its camera for all this, but a.) careful of your eyes – you’re looking right towards the laser and b.) be sure to use that filter. Again, your attacker might not give you enough time to fiddle with the camera until you locate him.
There’s a fairly good chance that the laser is attached to a night scope. Night scopes basically amplify the available light. This allows the peeper to view people who think they are safe because the lights are off.
If you were to just aim one of theseat the window next time it happens, there’s a good chance the screaming would last long enough to locate the miscreant.
Not sure what the legalities would be though. . .
How about putting up translucent curtains, perhaps red, maybe green to illuminate the dot them, making peering in harder, less appealing.
Just hanging threads over the window may distort the viewing pleasure of the laser person enough to have this person move on with life.
Now that doesn’t help catch the person, but might stop it. Having a camera on a constant video loop looking out the window may help especially if they happen to hit the camera with the laser, but it may have enough ‘spillage’ to see what window has a green light come on.
This is probably the most sensible suggestion - get a camera and capture the evidence. I would suggest one of those 360 degree action cams - like this - if you’re shooting video when the attack happens, a direct hit on the camera will swamp out the image, but there should be at least one frame, earlier or later in the footage, in which the offender will just appear as a bright green dot - from this, it should be possible to determine location - that dot will be in a window.
I’d say there is a fairly good chance it’s an idiot 13 year old boy. Green laser pointers are not spy/assassin equipment these days. And if you’re trying to secretly peep, even with a night vision device, popping a bright spot on the target would be a bad idea.
Can’t she get a good idea of where it is coming from just from the lines of sight as she moves around? If there is a dot that gets cut off as she walks past the window, the LOS right as it gets cut off should give an indication where it was coming from.
The terms are redundant.
Yeah - this was my low-tech idea. What part(s) of her body gets lit up in what rooms, as well as any dots on walls or ceilings? Unless her apt is entirely floor-to-ceiling windows with no window coverings, with the same across the street, I’d imagine it could pretty easily be reduced to a couple of apts on a couple of floors. Would be useful info for when she calls the police.
If she has window coverings to play around with, that could narrow things down even more.
When I don’t want people peeping in my windows, I close the curtains. Get the light blocking kind. No more problem. I mean, the kid with the laser is certainly being an ass, but I see no reason to get the police involved.
28000 lumens for $26? Horse Hockey.