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DIY-Thermocam: A low-cost thermal imager based on the FLIR Lepton sensor

diy-thermocam.net

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Re: DIY-Thermocam: A low-cost thermal imager based on the FLIR Lepton sensor

#91

Post by fest »

There's another path to cheap thermal imaging- some premium cars have had thermal imagers for night vision (animal, pedestrian detection) for ~10 years.

The most common such system is Autoliv NV3, which is using the same sensor as Tau2/Flir E4/E8 (~320x256px). The original processing electronics does have protection preventing the use of it without car's ECU (though it's already broke), but the sensor interface is reverse engineered. Due to the age of the vehicles and the fact that the protective window in front of the lens is easily damaged, the modules can be bought relatively cheaply (I got mine for ~150EUR).

I made a breakout board for the sensor and have a more-or-less working nmigen gateware (using glasgow): https://github.com/festlv/isc0901b0-breakout

I don't have it fully working yet, as the sensor requires bias values to be sent for each pixel and Glasgow didn't have enough on-board memory to store them, and the thermal image without correct bias values is more or less unusable (many pixels are underexposed/overexposed).

I have hardware ready for ECP5 development board with enough onboard RAM but life got in the way, so it's still sitting in the pile of unfinished projects :/

There's also next generation (Autoliv NV4 == Veoneer NiVi4) which is based on 640x512 Boson sensor, though there is a lot less information about it.

Re: DIY-Thermocam: A low-cost thermal imager based on the FLIR Lepton sensor

#93

Post by giantg2 »

angry_octet wrote: post #90
giantg2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FLIR offers higher resolution and higher framerate options too. For that, they want you to buy a Boson or higher. They even make Leptons with 25fps capability. The firmware for the standard Lepton simply reads every third frame.

Makes me wonder how hard it would be to flash a different firmware. For other people's benefit, from the FLIR website: In general, thermal cameras operating at 60 fps and/or 30 fps (NTSC) or 50 / 25 fps (PAL) video rates are export-controlled by the U.S. government. The FLIR OEM camera modules - including Tau2 640 (both 60 and 30 fps), Tau2 336 — are classified as dual-use items and require export licenses from the U…

My understanding is the firmware is on some non-writeable chip.

Re: DIY-Thermocam: A low-cost thermal imager based on the FLIR Lepton sensor

#94

Post by joshvm »

giantg2 wrote: post #64
joshvm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want a UVC setup then the purethermal carrier is the route to go. You buy FLIR because they're well made, reliable products. Same reason people spend the money on Fluke. I'm not sure you can necessarily say the support is better for consumers because they mostly cater to OEMs, but the camera cores are (mostly) very well documented and software support is good.

"the camera cores are (mostly) very well documented and software support is good." I have seen some good documents, but they are mostly tailored to OEMs as well. It also depends on what you want to do. I've been trying to get a lepton streaming video to a TFT screen using an ESP32. Resources are scares. If you hit a problem, you're basically on your own.

Hmm from my experience the Software IDD is pretty good, but ultimately it's not designed as a consumer part. (I am the author of flirpy which is aimed at more end user applications but I've not added low level support for the Lepton yet)

Re: DIY-Thermocam: A low-cost thermal imager based on the FLIR Lepton sensor

#95

Post by rasz »

oneplane wrote: post #27

It's pretty cool. But note that from an end-user perspective you're getting a Flir Lepton 3.5 thermal camera for $522.99. A Flir TG165-X does mostly the same stuff for a much lower price (and half the horizontal and vertical resolution due to the lower end lepton). But the TG doesn't allow you to hack it, and this project does. A Flir ONE (2nd Gen) does almost the same, for about half the price. But again, not as hac…

not matched, beat by Chinese $200 256×192@25hz USB modules https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMQeXq1ujn0

Re: DIY-Thermocam: A low-cost thermal imager based on the FLIR Lepton sensor

#97

Post by woheeeee »

Goz3rr wrote: post #45
atoav wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. 523 USD for a car is suspicously cheap. 523 USD for a mediocre sandwich is outrageously expensive. Context matters and thermal imaging is very expensive usually.

I still find it expensive for a thermal imager. I personally bought a Chinese Guide PC210 for €216 shipped, and that includes 21% VAT, for a whole unit and not just a sensor. For another €15 I got a ZnSe lens for macro use. Not only is it cheaper, on paper it's also much better: - 45 mK vs 50 mK thermal sensitivity - ±2 °C or ±2% vs ±10°C or ±10% accuracy - 256x192 vs 160x120 resolution - 25 vs 8.7Hz framerate - -20…

Hi, where did you buy it for that price? I can't find an offer which is even close to that price range.
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