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Tuesday, January 07, 2014

FLIR Announces First Consumer Thermal Camera

FLIR announces FLIR One - a $350 thermal imaging camera that clips on back of iPhone 5 or 5s:


The camera has two sensors - an IR one with unknown resolution and a visible light VGA sensor that "adds visible spectrum detail to thermal images and enhances resolution":


A promotional Youtube video talks about the new camera applications:



Thanks to SF for the link!

Update: FLIR also announces Lepton thermal imaging camera core - similar in size, weight, and power consumption to a conventional CMOS cell phone camera module, said to be the world's smallest microbolometer-based thermal imaging camera core currently available. Lepton is used in FLIR One camera. It has "a breakthrough lens fabricated in wafer form, a microbolometer FPA, and advanced thermal image processing on an ASIC. Lepton is fully compatible with FLIR’s patented multi-spectral imaging (MSX) technology, which allows visible and thermal image streams to be combined for sharper, more visually pleasing hybrid images."

FLIR Lepton Module

17 comments:

  1. This is big ! resolution, anyone?

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    1. At CES they said the resolution was 80x60.

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  2. I was wondering, what are the real applications of this FLIR?
    Besides, seeing the heat?
    Why is it going to be big?

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  3. Think there are quite some applications for this, but maybe more in the working environment.
    Inspection of isolation, search for leakages, mechanical stress indicators, etc.

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  4. How about the moral/legal consequences of such technologies...

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  5. This technology has no more moral/legal consequences than any other imaging sensor.

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    Replies
    1. You might understand if a person is sexually excited by looking at the heat coming from... "there"?

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  6. The resolution is 60x80

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  7. They have made a tricky arrangement. The VGA sensor gives a contour image and the thermal sensor "paints" the temperature on this contour image. The combination gives much sharper impression.

    -yang ni

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  8. That is tricky indeed. At $350 price point, I guess this is what is possible, and probably ok for consumer and DIY use. Could not they have used phone's processing power instead of an ASIC?

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    1. The ASIC is used for the calibration terms for the infrared camera and for coordinating data flow from the visible and IR cameras to the iphone. Out side of the infrared core the ASIC isn't really used; the blending and any image processing is done on the iphone.

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  9. Could this thing see through curtains? (With lower resolution I suppose..)

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    1. At these wavelengths, you can't see through glass.

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  10. So that cat image there is just a blurred/smoothed version of the tiny 80x60 resolution drawn over an edge image - with alignment error the closer you get? mmmmh not so great but OK for the price (if you already have an i-phone 5, otherwise E4 has similar pricing).

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    Replies
    1. E4 is almost three times as much and inconvenient, if as you said you already have an iphone.

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  11. Applications are for heat loss anywhere around building environment, windows, insulation, doors, thermal inspection.

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  12. Resolution on this is tiny but very cleverly the company have used the visible camera to smooth the resulting image. Would like to see what it looks like with a photo taken in the dark, reckon it would fall pretty flat as there would be no visible image to blend with the result. Think you'd end up with something looking like it was plucked from minecraft! See this more as a toy than a useful gadget.

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