81–90 of 97 posts
Somewhat related: FLIR sold a handheld model back in 2013—the E4—that had the same electronics and sensors as their high-end E8 model. The E4’s firmware was originally unencrypted, so some enterprising folks quickly figured out how to turn the 80x60 E4 (~$1000) into a 320x240 E8 (~$6000). As in, functionality, resolution, and performance were indistinguishable between a modded E4 and a retail E8. They didn’t even bin…
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It's also lowish-cost for the field and is possible because the tech has come down quite a bit , which enabled a whole new range of applications that weren't possible before due to price. ;) But I assume the chinese parts at least will continue to become cheaper, although afaik they are currently not as available as individual parts vs complete devices.
It's been around this price for around 5 years at least, or more. Since the FLIR one came out really.
I've been working on a lepton project for about 5 months. The resources for examples and debugging are scarce and I don't have a lot of time to spend on it. It should be much cheaper than this using an ESP32. I haven't gotten it to work though. I did get it working (but choppy) on a Pi Zero. I might be able to get it working smoothly if I wanted to trim down some of the other processes and prioritize this one. But th…
Was your software running bare metal or with an OS?
Can you make a slightly crappier version with a much cheaper visible spectrum sensor? I don't know much (obviously) about how they work, but intuitively it would seem a bit weird to me if they just happened to be restricted to exactly the same part of the spectrum as our eyes as a hardware limitation. Can you ignore data about visible red and higher in firmware, and get a thermal image that's obviously not as good as…
The visible detectors are kind of a lucky accident, that the visible spectrum is within the range that can be detected by a silicon sensor. Therefore, visible sensors are cheap and easy to make thanks to silicon IC technology. Sensors that detect IR beyond about 1 micron wavelength (the bandgap of silicon, where it becomes transparent) have to be made out of more "exotic" materials that are also more expensive. The problem might be surmountable, but fewer people want to set up and optimize "fabs" for those materials.
The problem with detecting heat with silicon is that the intensity is extremely low, and the amount of background radiation high. Getting a temperature measurement that isn't corrupted by other effects is going to be difficult.
Somewhat related: FLIR sold a handheld model back in 2013—the E4—that had the same electronics and sensors as their high-end E8 model. The E4’s firmware was originally unencrypted, so some enterprising folks quickly figured out how to turn the 80x60 E4 (~$1000) into a 320x240 E8 (~$6000). As in, functionality, resolution, and performance were indistinguishable between a modded E4 and a retail E8. They didn’t even bin…
I was able to do the same thing in 2023 with a new retail E4.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSZm3q4rUBg Above is a seminar on analog layout designed to target Tiny Tapeout that went over Magic (by Jonathan Edwards) and Klayout (Thomas Perry). Sky130 and tinytapeout can do analog, but most of the tools and the examples are digital based. https://i.imgur.com/NespRr4.png https://www.klayout.de/forum/discussion/1879/video-demo-of-a...
oh fantastic, do you mean subtext jonathan edwards? i had no idea he was doing hardware i thought the google shuttle program connected your design to the outside world through some kind of digital bullshit
With Tiny Tapeout the levels of inception increase, we must go deeper and you get 8 bits in and 8 out and the designs are daisy chained. Purely for experimentation. 1000 logic cells or whatever else you can fit in the space.
Excellent specs and design, good value. Somewhat off-topic, but if you want to get into thermal imaging for super cheap (albeit at a lower resolution again), you can get a compact FLIR kit from M5stack for $79 that's ready to use as soon as you charge it, but also freely hackable. https://shop.m5stack.com/collections/m5stack-new-arrival/pro...
It's really low resolution, but I wonder what could be done with some super resolution techniques. Is the transfer function of these sensors well defined?
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Emphasis being "on paper". When I worked for a research company we got a cheaper Korean company to demo their thermal cameras. They were just way way worse than FLIR and the software was abysmal (FLIR's software is surprisingly good). Ended up going for the £4k FLIR camera (not my money tbf). On the plus side I didn't even know about the 9fps thing at the time and they didn't ask me about it, but we still got a 25fps…
I intentionally mentioned the on paper part because I can't attest to the absolute accuracy, but in the aspects that are easily comparable I would say it's way ahead of the FLIR C5 that cost 4x as much I use at work. Both are used for diagnostics of electronics, so the resolution and framerate make a noticeable difference here. On top of that mine boots up and is ready to go in under 5 seconds, while the FLIR takes c…
For a lot of uses that doesn't really matter tbf. IIRC in the FLIR software you can disable the periodic self calibration they do (which is quite annoying). Maybe that would improve startup time.
Can you make a slightly crappier version with a much cheaper visible spectrum sensor? I don't know much (obviously) about how they work, but intuitively it would seem a bit weird to me if they just happened to be restricted to exactly the same part of the spectrum as our eyes as a hardware limitation. Can you ignore data about visible red and higher in firmware, and get a thermal image that's obviously not as good as…
> it would seem a bit weird to me if they just happened to be restricted to exactly the same part of the spectrum as our eyes as a hardware limitation.
That's a feature, for the leica m8 sensor "sees" UV and IR, as a result you need to use a UV/IR filter on your lens otherwise you get weird colors and blurrier images (since UV/visible light/IR all focus at different plans)
https://www.35mmc.com/14/02/2016/leica-m8-infrared-cut-filte...
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FLIR systems are limited in resolution and frame rate because of ITAR restrictions, even though they're the industry leader. Chinese systems have improved a lot in recent years and are not subject to ITAR and can offer higher resolutions and framerates
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.
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.S. Department of Commerce.
The FLIR Vue and Vue Pro (640 and 336) are also dual-use.
Boson 640 (60/30 fps) and Boson 320, are controlled to the ITAR, and require export licenses from the U.S. Department of State prior to delivery outside of the U.S. or Canada.
The U.S. government allows thermal cameras with frame rates less that 9 fps to be exported without a license. This is why FLIR offers thermal cameras with "fast video" and "slow video" options.