Camera Zapper - Disable Surveillance or Security Cameras

You have seen this done in movies. An electronics device such as a laser is pointed at a security camera and the camera is disabled and goes blank. Fact? or Fiction? Consider this our very own episode of Myth Busters, can a laser zap and disable a security camera?

We chose to use a red portable laser because they are focus adjustable. For this experiment, we are interested in adjusting the focus so the laser has a large beam diameter far away. There are two benefits of doing this. First, by spreading out the power of the laser, we avoid damaging our camera. Second, it is much easier to aim the laser with a large end dot. For our experiment here, the beam diameter at 30 feet was around 5 inches wide.

Adjusting the beam diameter of our portable lasers is quite simple. The focusing mechanism is located at the front of the portable laser. To un-focus the portable laser, just twist the focusing mechanism counter clockwise, it should look like the picture below:

When unfocused, you should get a large beam diameter or end dot as per the picture below.

We're now ready to start the experiment! Let's see what happens when we point a red portable laser at a Cannon IXUS camera.

While we used a red portable laser in this experiment, you will get the same results for red, infrared or green portable lasers.