You look hot!
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This isn't a call for arson-as-a-service, so I'm gonna page someone else: @BernieTheBernie, for reasons that should be obvious to members (though of course anyone else's advice is welcome!).
For years I've wanted to get myself a thermal camera and I'm looking for suggestions for something reasonably priced.
I don't really have a specific use-case in mind, other than walking around and checking the temperature of various stuff. One obvious application would be to look how my home is leaking heat but really that's at best the excuse I'm giving myself to buy a new gizmo, not much more (though it would be useful at that!).
I know that Caterpillar does (did?) a smartphone with an IR camera (and overall a pretty ruggedized one) but I'm not really looking for a new smartphone and buying another one just for that seems a bit overkill. Plus, it's not cheap. Though looking quickly around, it seems there isn't really anything good below 500 bucks, more or less. Which is... quite a lot for a semi-useless gizmo impulse buy!
So, does anyone know of a cheap but still usable IR camera? If that doesn't exist and I have to fork out 500 bucks, if I decide to do so, which one would be worth that much (nifty additional features, specific use-cases, longevity...)?
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@remi said in You look hot!:
This isn't a call for arson-as-a-service, so I'm gonna page someone else: @BernieTheBernie, for reasons that should be obvious to members (though of course anyone else's advice is welcome!).
For years I've wanted to get myself a thermal camera and I'm looking for suggestions for something reasonably priced.
I don't really have a specific use-case in mind, other than walking around and checking the temperature of various stuff. One obvious application would be to look how my home is leaking heat but really that's at best the excuse I'm giving myself to buy a new gizmo, not much more (though it would be useful at that!).
I know that Caterpillar does (did?) a smartphone with an IR camera (and overall a pretty ruggedized one) but I'm not really looking for a new smartphone and buying another one just for that seems a bit overkill. Plus, it's not cheap. Though looking quickly around, it seems there isn't really anything good below 500 bucks, more or less. Which is... quite a lot for a semi-useless gizmo impulse buy!
So, does anyone know of a cheap but still usable IR camera? If that doesn't exist and I have to fork out 500 bucks, if I decide to do so, which one would be worth that much (nifty additional features, specific use-cases, longevity...)?
I've had two of the FLIR Cat phones, and I'd say it's nice to have the combined regular camera and FLIR to make the image easier to interpret, since just FLIR only shows IR, it actually makes it a bit hard to see what's what.
Also, get a decent resolution, and temperature range. For my usecase, the phone FLIR is perfect, since I always have it with me, and it makes it easy to do simple stuff like find heat leaks or cable issues, or temperature issues in internal combustion engines.
Or spot people in a crowd that has a fever.
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@Carnage said in You look hot!:
it's nice to have the combined regular camera and FLIR to make the image easier to interpret, since just FLIR only shows IR, it actually makes it a bit hard to see what's what.
That is one of the obvious problems I see with cheaper models (that only have the IR camera) but it's nice to have a confirmation from a real user, thanks.
FLIR looks like the obvious quality brand, judging from how often it pops up in relation with, well, anything IR-related. But maybe there are other niche brands that are cheaper but still good-enough for occasional use?
I looked again at Cat phones, their current IR model is the S62 which retails at around EUR 600 (maybe 500 at best). I can get a "refurbished" one for EUR 300 which is half-price so not bad though I'm a bit wary about that. Still quite a bit of money.
I was hoping I could get an old Cat (e.g. S60 or S61) for cheap but the
great thing with modern tech is that it's almost impossible to buy an older model 
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@remi said in You look hot!:
@Carnage said in You look hot!:
it's nice to have the combined regular camera and FLIR to make the image easier to interpret, since just FLIR only shows IR, it actually makes it a bit hard to see what's what.
That is one of the obvious problems I see with cheaper models (that only have the IR camera) but it's nice to have a confirmation from a real user, thanks.
FLIR looks like the obvious quality brand, judging from how often it pops up in relation with, well, anything IR-related. But maybe there are other niche brands that are cheaper but still good-enough for occasional use?
I looked again at Cat phones, their current IR model is the S62 which retails at around EUR 600 (maybe 500 at best). I can get a "refurbished" one for EUR 300 which is half-price so not bad though I'm a bit wary about that. Still quite a bit of money.
I was hoping I could get an old Cat (e.g. S60 or S61) for cheap but the
great thing with modern tech is that it's almost impossible to buy an older model Yeah, and if you like having the latest version of android, Cat is not your brand.
There are chinese rugged phoens with IR cameras as well, but I've used Cat since my first one since they seem to survive better than everything else I've tried in my hands.
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@Carnage said in You look hot!:
Yeah, and if you like having the latest version of android, Cat is not your brand.
Which is another reason why I would be OK with buying an old Cat phone -- it won't be cutting edge anyway (even a brand new one), so why bother with anything else than the feature I want (the IR camera)? But that doesn't really seem possible, so...
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@remi said in You look hot!:
fork out 500 bucks
Sorry, those things are a little more pricey.
I remember that German supermaket chain Aldi offered a consumer grade IR camera a couple of months ago, just over 1,000 Euros.
The things I used to work with are
- its germanium coated lens alone costs much more than that.
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ElectroBOOM seemed to like this particular brand: https://www.thermal.com/compact-series.html
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@e4tmyl33t FLIR has a few similar attachments for smartphones (FLIR One et al.). Price range seems to be €250-€500, depending on resolution and temperature range. The cheapest version seems to have a 60x90 sensor, so it is a bit limited.
The Thermal ones linked above seemed to be a bit more bang for the buck on a first glance.
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@BernieTheBernie said in You look hot!:
Sorry, those things are a little more pricey.
I remember that German supermaket chain Aldi offered a consumer grade IR camera a couple of months ago, just over 1,000 Euros.I can easily find various FLIR models (on Amazon and elsewhere) for much less than EUR1000, and they do seem to have very good reviews and all features a casual user (indeed, even a semi-pro user!) might need. So I have no idea what Aldi sold but it definitely seems like you can get something good for half that price, more or less.
The things I used to work with are
- its germanium coated lens alone costs much more than that.Yeah, I would expect so. But you probably know more about IR that anyone else here, so having you telling me that even EUR 500 is far too cheap means it's probably pointless to hope for anything significantly cheaper...
I guess this will remain a "gizmo-I'd-like-but-will-never-get"
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@e4tmyl33t said in You look hot!:
ElectroBOOM seemed to like this particular brand: https://www.thermal.com/compact-series.html
Quite a bit cheaper, indeed. Though it seems for that price you can't overlay IR + normal camera picture, which probably makes the thing somewhat less usable. It seems a bit weird that this isn't feasible, given that the IR camera is attached to a phone that obviously has a regular camera, so it would "just" be a matter of superimposing both pictures (which might not be entirely trivial, sure, and that thread () has stories about it, but shouldn't be totally impossible either).
The other thing that worries me is that the list of incompatible devices is actually quite large, and has no obvious characteristics to explain why they're incompatible. And since my phone is not explicitly listed as compatible, and the only phone of the same brand (Huawei) listed is incompatible... well if I fork out 200 bucks for something that isn't even usable with my phone, I'd be pretty annoyed!
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@remi They can't use the same lenses. Phone lenses are pretty awesome for their size, but their absorption properties in IR are usually not mapped, nor is the chromatic aberration in those frequencies (because that's only tuned in the optical range). You might be able to get away with it in the near IR with only a little distortion... if you had the right sort of sensor underneath (which is a currently rare thing because it was never in the design spec). But as wavelengths get longer, you need larger lenses and possibly different materials and different shapes and...
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@dkf I wasn't thinking of using the same lens.
In the setup linked above, the IR camera is a dongle that plugs into the phone. Therefore the position of the IR sensor should be relatively well-known compared to the position of the phone camera (*), and thus it should be possible to compose the two images into a single coherent display.
Of course that wouldn't work below some minimal distance from the phone (since the two cameras are not that close to each other), and the adjustment would never be perfect (the dongle probably isn't a perfectly tight fit -- though it could be designed to be somewhat tight, with some sort of clamping around the phone), but given the overall low-res of the IR sensor anyway, small alignment errors wouldn't matter.
(*) you could have a database of various phones' geometries to get the precise distance to between the lenses, or you could have some calibration phase where you'd take a picture of a sharp temperature contrast and manually adjust the two pictures so that they match. I'm probably glossing over some details that would make things more complicated, but again, a rough match should be enough to be at least a little bit useful.
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@remi said in You look hot!:
@dkf I wasn't thinking of using the same lens.
In the setup linked above, the IR camera is a dongle that plugs into the phone. Therefore the position of the IR sensor should be relatively well-known compared to the position of the phone camera (*), and thus it should be possible to compose the two images into a single coherent display.
Of course that wouldn't work below some minimal distance from the phone (since the two cameras are not that close to each other), and the adjustment would never be perfect (the dongle probably isn't a perfectly tight fit -- though it could be designed to be somewhat tight, with some sort of clamping around the phone), but given the overall low-res of the IR sensor anyway, small alignment errors wouldn't matter.
(*) you could have a database of various phones' geometries to get the precise distance to between the lenses, or you could have some calibration phase where you'd take a picture of a sharp temperature contrast and manually adjust the two pictures so that they match. I'm probably glossing over some details that would make things more complicated, but again, a rough match should be enough to be at least a little bit useful.
Or, just have a slider (or two, for zoom) in the app to align the two images. That's how FLIR does it in the Cat phone.
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@Carnage that's more or less what I was thinking about in my "calibration phase," yes.
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@remi said in You look hot!:
One obvious application would be to look how my home is leaking heat but really that's at best the excuse I'm giving myself to buy a new gizmo
Hunters also often use IR to see deer / wild boar / rabbits etc: animals are warmer than the surrounding. Also some photo trap cameras for wild life may use that feature (not sure about that). By the way, even big insects may be IR visible at night, like noisy cicadas (generating lots of body heat while "singing" loudly).
You might use it as a system for detection of burglars - they might try to hide on their way, but the heat can be seen.Other fun is water droplets on clothes. When washing your hands, you likely get a droplet onto your shirt, which you won't see. But in IR, it is a cold spot (evaporating water takes away heat).
Lean your hand against a wall: you'll spot it afterwards in IR.But yes, the thing can be very expensive, depending on resolution, frame rates, temperature ranges, calibration, ...
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@BernieTheBernie said in You look hot!:
animals are warmer than the surrounding.
Yup, that's another fun thing I would like to try. Just the other evening as I was walking in the fields I saw an owl fly almost above my head, but of course I didn't hear anything (owls are amazing!) and wouldn't have seen it if it had gone a couple of meters to the side (which, btw, is a great experience to imagine how e.g. a field mouse might see life... you're out and about keeping a watchful eye but even then, suddenly out of the sky without any noise or warning, bam! killed by an owl...). I would probably have some fun walking around and trying to spot things with an IR camera.
I had some hope that since the last time I checked (more or less when the first Cat phones came out, I think?) the tech would have become more affordable, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Oh well.
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@remi My impression is, sensor stuff gets cheap versions from big manufacturers trying to get it into their smartphone sensoriums. Since there's not enough usecase for IR, none of them have tried, and it hasn't been made cheap yet.
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@PleegWat so, all I need to do is find some semi-credible use-case, pimp it up enough with some #social #media #campaign, wait for Apple to put an IR sensor in the next iPhone as a result, and finally wait a couple of years when other manufacturers pick up lowered cost to produce cheap IR cameras?
Easy-peasy.
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@remi IIRC some early versions of Windows Hello with face recognization used a low-res(-ish) IR camera. I think Samsung also had something like that (plus an IR laser or LED that was a bit on the strong side). There were a few phones with Kinect-like 3D scanners, which probably also operated in IR (+lasers).
That said, those probably were different from what you'd need for a thermal IR camera. I'd guess those were mostly very narrow band (not sure what a thermal camera wants, but if you want to estimate temperature, you probably need a bit more of the spectrum?).
