  IO:I is a new instrument that has recently been commissioned for the
Liverpool Telescope, extending current imaging capabilities beyond the optical
and into the near infrared. Cost has been minimised by use of a previously
decommissioned instrument's cryostat as the base for a prototype and
retrofitting it with Teledyne's 1.7$\mu m$ cutoff Hawaii-2RG HgCdTe detector,
SIDECAR ASIC controller and JADE2 interface card. In this paper, the
mechanical, electronic and cryogenic aspects of the cryostat retrofitting
process will be reviewed together with a description of the software/hardware
setup. This is followed by a discussion of the results derived from
characterisation tests, including measurements of read noise, conversion gain,
full well depth and linearity. The paper closes with a brief overview of the
autonomous data reduction process and the presentation of results from
photometric testing conducted on on-sky, pipeline processed data.
