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  • edzieba - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link

    It is a shame that a pair of what are effectively IR USB webcams are locked to use with smartphones, rather than being accessible on a PC. They would make a great addition to the Machine vision repertoire.
  • ganeshts - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link

    FWIW, FLIR has a SDK available for the FLIR One. It is ostensibly meant for developing Android / iOS apps, but it is possible that one might be able to utilize it in some way when connected to a PC also (my conjecture, after playing around a bit with the SDK)
  • Stuka87 - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link

    There are models out there for a PC, if you want to have a camera locked to be used in one physical location. The phone models are just extremely handy, easy to move around, record video, take photos, etc.
  • Madpacket - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link

    9 FPS is a little disappointing. Someone needs to buy one of these and mod it to capture at 60 FPS. Think of night vision and attaching one of these to a quad copter to spot any warm blooded thing around you. I can see this market taking off.
  • MrTeal - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link

    These don't use CMOS or CCD sensors like a typical webcam. They use a microbolometer, and those generally aren't used for high speed imaging. The 9FPS limit is almost certainly a sensor limit rather than an electronics or interface limit.
  • ganeshts - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link

    While I agree they are not like the typical image sensors, the 9 FPS limitation is imposed by the government's export restrictions.

    I actually talked to FLIR at CES about this - they indicated that if the customer were to get the necessary clearance / paperwork processed, they can enable higher frame rates for the video from the Lepton sensors.
  • MrTeal - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link

    That's interesting. I wonder what the sensor limit on these cheap ones would be. We recently picked up a very nice GigE a-Si imager, and even it is limited to 30FPS at the top end.
  • extide - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link

    It's a government export restriction. Probably to make it harder to build guided missiles and the like.
  • name99 - Monday, January 25, 2016 - link

    I have one of the original FLIR cameras (the one's hardwired for an iPhone5). I'd say
    - it's definitely useful/interesting/fun if you buy it at a low price. I would say I recovered its value almost immediately in that I used it to look around my (freezing!) bedroom, confirmed where the coldest areas were, and did something about it by mounting some hooks and hanging some heavy fabric over the areas (the window [flimsy curtains], and the entrance to the bathroom) to ramp up the thermal resistance.

    Now, in theory, the camera was not NECESSARY for this. If held at gunpoint, I'd have guessed that those were the two cold spots. But seeing your guesses actually confirmed gives you some extra impetus to get off your butt and try to fix the problem.

    - OK, the flip side is the following: These things do not (yet?) give you Predator heat vision, and you can't really convert them into fantastic night vision goggles.
    What you have to remember is that with IR you are seeing by emitted, not reflected, light; so that's the first issue. People and other non-stove/car engine things just aren't emitting that many photons (compared to the number of photons being emitted then reflected in vision). So the first thing you need is a large collecting area to collect lots of photons, and something like FLIR is not designed for that task; large collection area is not part of the spec.

    The second problem is that the world is full of other stuff ALSO emitting IR. Walking down the street houses, cars, trees, are all emitting IR, and things get lost in that clutter. It's not like seeing a lantern against a black background, but like seeing a lantern against a very busy white to slightly grey background. If you CAN get a person against a cold background, they obviously stand out --- I did manage to see a person on the far side of a bridge, with the cold sky as background, and they were obviously visible from say 50 ft away. But it's going to depend a lot on the background temperature of where you are. A woody environment in summer may be hopeless; the desert in winter may work really well.

    So these cameras are good for the things they claim to be good for --- looking around the house for temperature differentials. But when trying to explore the wider world with them, while interesting, you very soon see the limitations to the tech. I suspect real night-vision goggles, in addition to a much larger collection area, are applying a bunch of image processing techniques to accentuate very small differences in temperature, and to edges. Of course in theory you could try to do that with custom SW using these devices, but that's not what they're optimized for. (eg the edge detection the FLIR gives, by imposing optically visible edges on top of the IR image, while it works REALLY WELL for my sort of "what's hot and what's cold in my house?" problem, is not useful if you're trying to engage in night vision.
  • R3ds - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link

    I think you may be mixing up light amplification (night vision) with infrared (thermal).
  • Lord of the Bored - Wednesday, January 27, 2016 - link

    Or he could get an infrared lamp, and then he can see the reflected light from his invisible flashlight. IR night vision IS a thing.
    ...
    It'd probably get confusing with the temperature color-coding applied, anyways. But whatcha gonna do? Buy a real night-vision scope? That's the chump's way, even if it IS half the cost of a FLIR sensor module on Amazon, and not available for shipping to California/outside the US.
  • Mr Perfect - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link

    So for $250 I can either have the 80x60 FLIR TG130 with no recording or the 206x156 Seek Compact with recording. Not a hard choice.
  • AngelOfTheAbyss - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link

    For smartphone-free operation you can choose between FLIR TG130 (80x60, no recording, $249) and Seek Reveal (206x156, recording, $399).
    If you want to use your smartphone the choices are Seek Compact (206x156, $249), Seek CompactXR (206x156, $299) and FLIR ONE (160x120, $249).
  • Mr Perfect - Wednesday, January 27, 2016 - link

    Yes, I know. It was more of a comment on pricing and features. Seeing as everyone basically has a smartphone on their person at all times, I'm just looking at the hardware in the entry level devices regardless of platform. At $250, the FLIRs seem strangely anemic compared to the Seeks.
  • ganeshts - Wednesday, January 27, 2016 - link

    MSX is very impressive once you see it in action. I should have the FLIR One review out shortly comparing the Seek Thermal and the FLIR One shooting the same stuff. You can definitely see the difference in what I would term as 'actionable' quality.
  • jasonelmore - Tuesday, January 26, 2016 - link

    i'm interested in the "Reveal" model more than anything else. It's rugged and can easily be carried around in a tool box with a bunch of metal tools and not get banged up. This is a perfect device for a computer hardware reviewer.
  • cjdipppenaar - Sunday, May 29, 2016 - link

    Good Day, looking at your review regarding Seek XR and Flir Scout i am a bit confused, what would your choice be or best choice if you would use it for scanning open areas like open fields or similar, will be mainly used for crime fighting.

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