Can a Red Plastic Cover Improve an IR Sensor Performance?

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Firefox123
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IR Detector Question...

If someone take an IR sensor and puts a red covered piece of plastic over the sensor...is that really going to significantly affect the performance?

A friend of mine has a laser detector for road use and it appears to have a red plastic cover over the IR sensor...

Police operate at 904 nanometers...is a red plastic cover really going to improve the performance of the IR sensor by acting as a type of "filter"?

I'm having a hard time believing this...
 
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If the filter has high transmission at the laser wavelength and lower transmission at other wavelengths, then yes. The filter will increase the signal to noise ratio of the detected radiation. Unless, of course, if the laser detector already has a narrow band filter, then adding another one has marginal returns.