Cheap plug-in Thermal Imaging Camera for Non Phone Applications - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: jonovid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2024, 04:13:06 am
content: is it possible to emulate the type-c socket on a phone with hardware/software ?so any plug-in thermal imaging camera with a type-c plugcan be used for non phone applications? for example home security camera systems.type-c sockets are sold but how would you extract the video from a type-c plug-in phone accessorie?no one is making cheap thermal imaging cameras for CCTV applications.but they are sold as popular phone plug-in accessorie. cheap see images from aliex.all we need is the video stream & any software logic to activate the phone accessorie.like a simple type-c socket adapter replaces the phone with AV output & 12 volt input?most thermal imaging cameras aresold in the wrong formfactor & overpricedfor any home CCTV applications.one can save a fortune on big flood infrared Illuminators if a home CCTV system also has true thermal imaging too.for example detecting possums and cats at night in the home garden trees & shrubs not just human intruders.has anyone used one of this type of cheap thermal imaging cameras to see its operating range of its lens.your thoughts please.

author: G28
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2024, 06:14:29 am
content: How about a SBC and USB adapter cable ?

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 23, 2024, 07:11:24 am
content: Quote from: jonovid on January 23, 2024, 04:13:06 amI'm not exact on the numbers, but I guess this is because the resolution you would need for some effective viewing would go waaay into ITAR territory.Have you tried this tool?https://www.jvsg.com/cctv-lens-calculator/Also USB C would be less then ideal. Ethernet with POE is what people want here.And you want a composite image, with both thermal and IR.Also this:https://github.com/OpenThermal/libseek-thermal

author: IwuzBornanerd
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 26, 2024, 04:20:46 am
content: I have found the 206x156 pixel Seek Compact & XR useful for detecting rabbits, fox squirrels, cats, [ O]possum, coon, skunks & some birds out to a distance of 15m & beyond. The XR, with it's 20 degree field of view (vs 36), is of course better as the distance increases. Cameras with wider fields of view would be less useful at the longer distances. I wrote my own software for this, but @Bostwickenator has added V4L2 loopback functionality to the github Seek code linked above by @jeroen3 so it should be possible to use it with the Linux package "motion" for surveillance purposes. Some of the Chinese thermal cameras provide UVC video compliant output so those could also be used with "motion" or probably Windows software. I think this would be a simpler & more readily available solution than trying to retrofit a USB camera to an "old fashioned" AV security system. I have not tried any thermal cameras with "motion", however, so I can't verify that any such schemes work.I don't know of any sort of adapter that would convert the USB data to the old AV signal, but I know of some that do the reverse of that. :~)to illustrate the ability of the low resolution camera to detect warm bodies, I'll upload a few videos.One shows a skunk romping around my back yard, captured by the wide angle Seek Compact. You can see that when the skunk is back near the fence (16m away) that the motion detection misses it part of the time because it is too few pixels.The video of the squirrels is with the XR so the squirrels grab more pixels & are easier to detect than with the wide angle unit. [edit:] I neglected to mention that this video is also the back yard with the tree about 12m away & the fence at 16m. You see the squirrels climbing on both.The "busy night" video is from the XR watching the front yard on a night when a variety of creatures passed into view. The motor vehicles are around 17-20m away and the deer are probably a few meters closer. The tree, which you see the deer pass on the far side, is around 7m away.The files are not, of course, text files; you will need to download them & delete the ".txt" from the end of the file name in order to watch the video since the system won't accept video file types.