FLIR for Apple iPhone

Anyone read/saw this interesting gadget yet?

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/flir-one...ts-you-see-heat-predator-style/444719-11.html

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/new...urns-your-iphone-into-a-thermal-camera-469796

:I want one! Unreal, wow!

iqwozpoom said:

:I want one! Unreal, wow!

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same, will buy one for fun. then find some real uses haha

I'll try to hold on until they also have light amplification capability. Night vision goggles in a pocket would be soooo sweet

Cataract said:

I'll try to hold on until they also have light amplification capability. Night vision goggles in a pocket would be soooo sweet

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i think i tested this but i don't remember for sure.
the iPhone cam can pickup IR. so you can have an IR flashlight (IR drop in 6P clone) then light up anything discreetly and it will show on your camera app. or was i daydreaming?
i need to buy an IR drop-in to experiment.

i still think a heat signature would be more fun because it's more apparent of living organisms.

I was thinking about navigating in the dark undetected. Finding people, animals and heat leaks can be fun too, but that means also carrying an IR flashlight for pure navigation... If only I had 700$ to spare...

Cataract said:

If only I had 700$ to spare...

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The FLIR One will cost $349, did I miss some other cost?

Norm

Norm said:

The FLIR One will cost $349, did I miss some other cost?

Norm

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yes, a powerful IR flashlight

I've been building a low-res open source version of this, based on plans from a kickstarter project I found on the 'net. Just got it working the other night. I'm 100% positive that this is what pushed FLIR to finally offer a low cost version of their products.

Here's from the CES show:

very interesting. any pics? how much was the total project?

i might just go for FLIR still because i like how the finished product looks.

Cataract said:

yes, a powerful IR flashlight

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An additional light source is not required. This is a device that detects infrared as evidenced by the video in the thread. I also suspect that the resolution is low, so it will be most effective at closer ranges that an external light would not be necessary for. I'm already on the waiting list.

f22shift said:

very interesting. any pics? how much was the total project?

i might just go for FLIR still because i like how the finished product looks.

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I'm in for about $140 in parts, most of it being the microbolometer IR sensor at $95. I will post some pics when I have it packaged up in a presentable format.

f22shift said:

i think i tested this but i don't remember for sure.
the iPhone cam can pickup IR. so you can have an IR flashlight (IR drop in 6P clone) then light up anything discreetly and it will show on your camera app. or was i daydreaming?
i need to buy an IR drop-in to experiment.

i still think a heat signature would be more fun because it's more apparent of living organisms.

Click to expand...

ok i tested with a TV remote. i have an iPhone 4 and 5s

iphone 4 front and rear can see IR
iphone 5s front can see, rear cannot see

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/flir-e4-thermal-imaging-camera-teardown/ is fantastic value for a 'real' FLIR today. Note the hack that gets you full resolution for sub $1k. I purchased an E4 a couple of months ago and performed the relatively simple firmware updates and have been using it (along with a focus adjust tool I 3D printed) to do thermal imaging of many of my LED drivers. Very impressive tool.

A quality stand alone tool (for me) makes a lot more sense than some low res phone accessory.

cheers,
george.

PhotonWrangler said:

I've been building a low-res open source version of this, based on plans from a kickstarter project I found on the 'net. Just got it working the other night. I'm 100% positive that this is what pushed FLIR to finally offer a low cost version of their products.

Click to expand...

I tested some thermal imagers a few months ago, IR Blue included. Let's put it this way: It is useless. Not useless as such but useless when compared to "real" thermal imagers. If there is a product that pushed Flir to offer a cheap smartphone version of their imagers, it must be the Indiegogo project by Mu Optics. Unfortunately though, Mu is still in the works and perhaps will never become a real product at all.

The pictures look great but it looks like Flir has not released the resolution of their imager. It suggests that it is probably worse than the resolution in Flir E4 (80*60 pixels). Now, the resolution of E4 is not that great, either... But it is useful, none the less. It is good enough for non-professional work (I didn't know about a hack so I can't comment that - couldn't have done it anyway since it was not my imager). What makes it a lot more illustrative is their MSX technology. It combines thermal imager data and visual camera data, highlighting all the high contrast areas (edges, shapes etc.). That is of course possible only when there is adequate lighting on scene. The pics will look worse in the dark.

A stock Flir E4 seemed to be a pretty good product already. 320*240 from it sounds like a steal.

The 'hack' for the 320x240 (for the E4) is trivial. It's hardly a hack, more a simple edit of ONE ascii file (with a text editor), generate a new CRC for the file, add that to the file and then use the Flir supplied tools to transfer the file via USB to the E4. There's also a nice menu system update that enables a bunch of features that not even the E8 has. The link I provided has all the info from the originators (based on the original tear down of the hardware by one very enterprising fellow).

E4 at 320x240 with the updated menu system is definitely a sub $1k bargain for a REAL thermal imaging camera - not some junk that barely sees into the short IR range (versus the true thermal long IR wavelengths).

Yes, MSX is a nice feature of the E4 (Ex series), but hardly matches the updated 320x240 + MSX capability

cheers,
george.

Here's my build for the IR-Blue. It's really low-res compared to everything else so it's not a "serious" thermal imager but it will still be useful until I go for something better. It's based on a Melexis 90620 microbolometer and it's built on a slightly modified arduino wireless protoboard. The sensor is the round black thing on the right, just above the PIC processor. The board uses bluetooth 2.0 (red daughterboard) to connect to the phone.

I'll post some images from it once I get it tweaked up a bit.

Have fun with the melexis unit. Though it appears to be 16 x 4 pixels which will provide only a tiny view of stuff. Should be interesting to learn all the thermal issues first hand, i.e. stuff like keeping the microbolometer's temperature stable, doing calibrations as things warm up, the software etc etc.

The Flir E4 (as shipped) was 80 x 60 as seemed nearly "toy like". I ran it for maybe 1/2 hour before doing the software patch to run 320 x 240.

At 320 x 240 and with the lens adjusted for 2 - 3" focal distance, the E4-enhanced is an amazing tool for what I require - thermal imaging for led driver components. It can easily resolve 0603 sized smt components and individual pins of tssop ICs.

The following picture shows the 0603 sized current limit resistors heating up (the brighter yellow devices). Just to the right of the cursor in the picture is an IC package - the tiny rectangular pads you see in the thermal image are the pads protruding beyond the edge of the leadless uC package.



"visible image" of the same board. The thermal image was only of the left 2/3 of the board. For scale, those ARE 5mm LEDs on the PCB.




cheers,
george.

Very cool, George. Thanks for the pics and the description. What did the E4 cost you?