Full Colour Night Vision Camera - Anyone used it?

[lukasz]

Gday Guys,

Im a complete novice when it comes to anything boats and cameras, but my Dad is an avid boater and we are looking for a birthday present for him. I have been seeing a ton of youtube videos on a product called the Sionyx Aroura out of the US which has been getting unreal reviews and the footage looks amazing, but my question is has anyone actually used one? Center Consoles Only did a cool video showing it being used as both a handheld and also mounted to the boat and navigating in the dark while steaming to a tablet, is this something that is practical?

Dad is a big fan of the latest and greatest in tech so if it is as good as it look it will be perfect. I just wanted to get some feedback from people with a lot more knowledge here than me to make sure it would be a good pick.

This is the video i saw of it being used to navigate:

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[The Mad Cat]

If it's as good as the clip shows it will be amazing. We boat a fair bit at night and I strive for maximum night vision ie, no unnecessary unnatural light. I can see that you probably would be very focused on the image from this camera so your night vision will be almost nothing. If it shows everything then great, but it may allow some into a false sense of security. I may not be explaining what I'm thinking very well. Some other opinions would be good.
I have an aviation background with more night flying than I should ever have done so very wary about boating in the dark.

TMC

[scottar]

Looks pretty good. I've used Flir before - great at low speed or in flat conditions. Video refresh rates make the picture extremely hard to view at speed in rougher conditions. You can see the pixelation in the simultanious views (pity they didn't actually align the various devices properly in the video) at times. Flir will see beacons, floating debree etc (bit of advertising spin there - everything gives off a thermal image) but at times with the pixilation it can be hard (not impossible) to see at speed. For the dollar though, that camera certainly looked the goods.