41–50 of 66 posts
Why would anyone need this?
Relevant: Turn cheap FLIR into expensive FLIR imager: http://hackaday.com/2013/11/04/manufacturer-crippled-flir-e4... Kickstart Phone Thermal Imaging: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mu-thermal-camera-a-great-... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andyrawson/ir-blue-therm...
The Mu Thermal Camera is almost certainly fake at this point. Check out the EEVBlog forum thread about it: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded-projects/m-thermal... They basically posted increasingly vague updates and no concrete information about the product.
I took of pic of one in action last night: http://imgur.com/vT4vl2o Seemed pretty responsive. Good enough to capture the residual temperature from someone touching a table. Not pro level stuff obviously but worth exploring for basic thermal imaging applications it seemed to me.
As someone who has spent the past month fighting with FLIR customer support to get a $5000 camera working robustly and correctly I doubt that this will be a good product. We have dozens of FLIR cameras and at least a quarter of them have been sent back for re-calibration. We're about to send one out for the second time. Also, forget about open source support.
This is meant to be pretty basic. Can you think of anything that could replace it? It seemed to work well when I demoed it, but for pro stuff obviously you wouldn't want to rely on it.
All of this is to say, it will probably work, but don't plan on building after-market apps on top of the camera technology.
Imaging is going to be the next "big" ITAR battleground. I think the "Camera Wars" will stir up more public controversy than what we had with the Crypto Wars. Crypto is not the only munition in disguise.
Thermal imaging sensors have been export-restricted for some time, though the details depend on the type of sensor. Here's a handy chart from DRS Technologies, which makes thermal sensors: http://www.drsinfrared.com/Support/ExportGuidelines.aspx
Relevant: Turn cheap FLIR into expensive FLIR imager: http://hackaday.com/2013/11/04/manufacturer-crippled-flir-e4... Kickstart Phone Thermal Imaging: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mu-thermal-camera-a-great-... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andyrawson/ir-blue-therm...
I've spoken to these guys and they are just taking longer than expected. I don't think it's vaporware. They could probably do better on the communication department on that note.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a 100 year old house that I've been remodeling, and this would enable me to easily find air leaks. I'm skeptical that it will enable me to find studs through horsehair plaster (they show visible studs in the gallery), but it will certainly make it easier to locate the position of forced hot water pipes in the walls and ceilings.
You can clearly see the studs in in the second picture: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/flir-e4-thermal-imagin... That's a 1927 house with plaster & lath walls.
Imaging is going to be the next "big" ITAR battleground. I think the "Camera Wars" will stir up more public controversy than what we had with the Crypto Wars. Crypto is not the only munition in disguise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Mu Thermal Camera is almost certainly fake at this point. Check out the EEVBlog forum thread about it: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/crowd-funded-projects/m-thermal... They basically posted increasingly vague updates and no concrete information about the product.
Nobody is going to read a 52 page shitBB thread... Can you give us the gist? It seems like an odd scam to run.
However, I do think the project owners got in over their heads and rather than giving up are building increasingly bizarre fabrications instead - something we see in the software startup world frequently, too!
The gist is that they promised a release date and it's been slipping ever since. This is pretty typical for crowdfunded, small projects as everyone vastly underestimates the time to delivery especially when it's their first rodeo.
The part that's a red flag for me is that even prior to their recent public silence their updates were cyclic and bizarre. They'd say they had a design and were choosing case prototypes, then two months later reappear to say that they had to move offices and somehow in the process did a complete layout do-over and were working on cases again, then reappear to say they were "finalizing" firmware for "optimal warm-up."
Throughout this whole process they've never provided an actual image from their camera.