Seek CompactPRO 590€ with allot of noise - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: borgesptg
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 02:22:05 pm
content: Hello all, i bought this thermal camera to help my collegue from eletronic repairs to diagnose and identify short components in pcb's and motherboards but this camera has allot of noise in image.With Hti-xintai and its color patterns pcb components are more clearer that with Seek APP but still is very far from the reviews i saw over the web, am i missing some lens or ajustment ? Anyone with this camera and similar experience ?

author: pauledd
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 03:24:05 pm
content: Depends on what is "allot of noise" for you. If I point my CompactPro to an area with very low thermal differences (lets say less than 5 Kelvin) I get a load of noise too.Btw. I had to send two units back to Amazon because one's temperature was very off (8 Kelvin) and the other had a horrible image gradient and was noisier.If you're not happy with your device send it back if you can and request another one. My guess is the variance of image quality is very broad with Seek devices...

author: borgesptg
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 06:16:24 pm
content: Here are some photos in a office:https://ibb.co/j5t1Db2https://ibb.co/MSkJZBYhttps://ibb.co/p1KcXR2Maybe there is a firmware update or other lens ?

author: Fraser
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 06, 2021, 10:01:48 pm
content: Thermally flat scenes with little temperature difference in the scene make the camera select a narrow temperature span. A simple test is to put some hot water in a mug and image it with the camera. The image should not be noisy as a broader temperature span is used. Narrow temperature spans can make any uncooled camera create a more noisy image.

author: IwuzBornanerd
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2021, 09:30:29 pm
content: Quote from: borgesptg on July 06, 2021, 06:16:24 pmActually those look pretty good for a 1 degree C span.As Fraser said, narrow spans will show the noise. I figure that my eyes can distinguish a maximum of 32 shades of gray so if you have an image wherein the entire black-to-white gray scale is spread over a 1 degree span then I would be able to see temperature differences as small as 0.03125 degrees C. Seek says their sensitivity is 0.07 degrees C (70mK), so with that 1 degree span you would certainly see the specified limit. But I also figure Seek actually has something like 150mK of noise, so yes, it will look bad at 1 degree span. But do you need to see that sort of temperature difference to troubleshoot pwb's?For an example of how tough it is to look good on narrow spans, see the images Ultrapurple posted of narrow span images from his Seek Reveal Pro and a couple ThermApps & a very good FLIR SC-660 here:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/seek-reveal-pro-ff-review-by-ultrapurple/msg2942854/#msg2942854I posted comparisons of various Seeks with around 3 degree C span at:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/the-seek-thermal-core-development-user-opinion-please/msg2915972/#msg2915972The vast majority of the time you will be looking at scenes with temperature spans more than just a few degrees C so they won't look all that noisy, and there are many such examples in the thermal imaging galleries & other threads on this forum.

author: Bill W
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2021, 11:39:33 pm
content: Quote from: IwuzBornanerd on July 07, 2021, 09:30:29 pmA few points to ponder....Seek's 70mK is the usual NeTD using an f/1 lens on a factory bench test, not the camera lens with the camera electronics.Hence your 150mK or worse when observing the real output as you are closer to doing an MDTD.Can the display show 32 shades of grey, in the same dynamic range as your eyes ?You may also need to factor in the frame rate. Those numbers are OK if looking at a freeze frame but not video. The eye - brain has a time constant of around 100ms (colour and greyscale differ) and so especially for higher frame rate cameras there is significant averaging there too.Bill

author: borgesptg
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: July 10, 2021, 08:03:37 am
content: Thank you all for your knowledge and imput. I ordered a macro lens for helping us with our eletronics diagnostics, i think that will improve the image motherboard layouts.