EEVblog #402 - Flir E60 IR Thermal Camera - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 22, 2012, 11:57:25 pm
content: Dave.

author: Razor512
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 12:11:15 am
content: Why cant they just make a 4K resolution thermal camera with a lens mount supporting a decent f1.4 anamorphic lens to maximize detail when outputting content to 16:9 displays, and possibly even a cinema mode where the raw video is recorded with an S-Log profile to allow for 13 stops of dynamic range in order to get the most out of the video in post production?

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 12:18:08 am
content: I think the reason most thermal cameras have limited resolution is because it's very difficult to make the individual sensor pixels small.

author: lewis
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 02:42:38 am
content: Quote from: Razor512 on December 23, 2012, 12:11:15 amThey can. It's called the James Webb Space Telescope.

author: peter.mitchell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 08:49:23 am
content: Quote from: Razor512 on December 23, 2012, 12:11:15 amBecause you need the lens elements to pass IR very efficiently, something conventional lens materials don't do. Also I feel this is sarcastic.

author: bitwelder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 09:02:21 am
content: Can you estimate how the 12000 AUD get distributed in the BOM?I guess most goes to the IR sensor... but what other expensive components are there?

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 09:54:23 am
content: Probably 2/3 is the sensor and the associated lens, along with the mount and the isothermal block for them. Then the rest is split between display, case, battery and battery management and the rest of the electronics. Probably the single biggest coat after the IR block is the rest of the case, as the moulds to make them are not cheap in something that complex, and there are most likely not many units made to drop the amortisation cost of the dies to an insignificant amount. Consider car body moulds generally are used to make 100k plus units before they are refurbished. Similar cost of mould, but the production run is likely to be only 10k units of the IR camera per year, not 500k like the car. VW here in SA had to do a major refurbishing of the VW Golf tooling, as it was 30 years old, and was well worn, about 10 years ago. Those have made millions of vehicles.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 10:17:16 am
content: Quote from: peter.mitchell on December 23, 2012, 08:49:23 amThe lens are made of Germanium.Dave.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 10:52:06 am
content: The problem is the market for TI cameras is small, and there aren't many manufacturers, so you have the old chicken/egg situation of small marked due to high price and high price due to small volumes. Given sufficient volume I'm sure he sensor price could come down significantly - I don't know enough about the intrinsic costs of making germanium optics to know how scaleable they are. I think the key there would be to get the sensor size down to allow the use of smaller opticsSilicon can also be used as a lens material, but not sure how useable it is at imaging, as opposed to detection type applications.e.g. thisOmron 4x4 sensoruses a silicon lens.Devices like theMelexis 16x4 sensorcould shake up the bottom end of the market, especially with projects likethis kickstarter for a $175 phone add-onWhich provide enough functionality for things like electrcal faultfinding and building heat loss, which are probably the main potential volume markets.However until there is a mass-market for higher-res sensors they will never be cheap. I wonder whatthis 1kx768 TI camera costs....

author: Psi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 11:02:47 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on December 23, 2012, 10:52:06 amI wonder if you could get better resolution out of one of those 16x4 sensors if you rotated it 90deg and mounted it to a motor that scanned a scene twice a second.Maybe you could up the res to 30x16 or something.The array has a framerate of up to 512Hz, so it might work.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 11:24:07 am
content: Quote from: Psi on December 23, 2012, 11:02:47 amI think the thermal mass of the sensor means the effective update rate would be somewhat less, but maybe still useable in a a slow-scan mode.

author: peter.mitchell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 12:10:43 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on December 23, 2012, 10:17:16 amIndeed, which means you can't just go out and grab a panavision anamorphic cine lens and slap that on the mount.

author: PA0PBZ
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 12:18:52 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on December 23, 2012, 11:24:07 amSeeing how easy IR is reflected you might get away with a rotating mirror like in a laserprinter (I'm sure lots of you have taken apart).You could even scan multiple vertical lines by slightly slanting the mirrors, if I remember correctly most lasers have 6 or 8 mirrors on the motor.If the sensor can do 512 images per second you could get 10FPS out of it with a resolution of 80*40 isn't it?Hmm, doesn't sound all that much after all.

author: kripton2035
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 12:37:33 pm
content: Quote from: SeanB on December 23, 2012, 09:54:23 amI bought an "old" used Flir B2 thermal camera a year ago.it is "only" 122 x 80 pixels sensor and it costed new more than 8000 euros.the battery was weak and a new one is 150 euros that's not too muchbut I asked for another lens you can have 3 different types : each one costs 2000 euros !!!so the sensor costs a lot but the lens I think it costs as much as the sensor.actually you can get a "night vision" camera on german high end cars mercedes or bmwthe option costs 2500 euros, and it is in the end a nice thermal camerathey sell more, so the price goes down.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 12:46:19 pm
content: Quote from: PA0PBZ on December 23, 2012, 12:18:52 pmThat still assumes the thermal response time of the sensor is fast enough. Remember a thermopile sensor is just bunch of small temperature sensors, which will have some thermal mass

author: KedasProbe
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 12:52:08 pm
content: I guess this is on its placeEmissivity:http://www.ictinternational.com.au/brochures/everest/emissivity-theory.pdfhttp://www.everestinterscience.com/info/emissivitytable.htm(The same temperature can seem to be measured as a different temperature)

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 01:54:40 pm
content: I wonder if you cool the sensor down, i.e. through a Peltier cooler, the thermal response would be better. Don't they do that for some sensors?

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 02:12:49 pm
content: Only done for those that need low noise. The common sensors utilise thermal difference to make the output, cooling makes it lower noise, though to get an advantage that is better than the power consumed you need a 3 or more stage petlier unit that takes the sensor down to liquid nitrogen temperatures so that there is effectively nearly no noise compared to room temp. You really would use these if you want a ultra low noise signal like in a telescope. James Webb telescope cools the detector actively with such a cooler to get it cooler than 4k as that is what the background is. The biggest problem they have is stray heat entering the optical path.

author: lewis
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 03:23:41 pm
content: FYI, the sensor these IR cameras use is called a Focal Plane Array Uncooled Microbolometer.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbolometerandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolometer.

author: Razor512
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 05:22:11 pm
content: To me the insane price seems to be one of two things.They charge a ton of money to have a huge profit margin because they can get away with it due to lack of competitionOr the second reason (though highly unlikely), They charge enough to get many 10's of thousands % profit margin because the devices last long enough that they wont sell very often (eg in the mattress industry, they may charge $1000 for a mattress that cost about $30-40 to make)I bet if someone took one apart and looked up all of the parts, they would get a BOM of less than $100eg kinda like how smartphones sell for nearly $900 when they cost about $200 or less to makehttp://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Many-iPhone-5-Components-Change-But-Most-Suppliers-Remain-the-Same-Teardown-Reveals.aspx(And those estimates don't even take into account volume discounts and other deals that the company may have made (since that info is not publicly available)

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 09:59:08 pm
content: Quote from: Razor512 on December 23, 2012, 05:22:11 pmOr maybe BOM and R&D costs are high due to limited volume. You're not going to sell millions of these anytime soon.Quote from: Razor512 on December 23, 2012, 05:22:11 pmTell me where to find just the sensor for $100, or just the lens.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 11:03:13 pm
content: How much are those 4x4 or 16x4 sensors?I mean, even a 16x16 camera wouldn't be too bad, if you could put them in a matrix, even better.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 11:16:27 pm
content: Omron 4x4 GB£30http://uk.farnell.com/omron-electronic-components/d6t-44l-06/sensor-thermal-mems-4x4/dp/2218000Panasonic 8x8 : US$39http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/AMG8831/255-3509-1-ND/3461616But the bastards won't ship it to UK ( same with all Panasonic products from DK)Melexis 16x4 US$65http://www.futureelectronics.com/en/technologies/semiconductors/analog/sensors/temperature/Pages/5020660-MLX90620ESF-BAB-000-TU.aspx?IM=0Omron are promising a 16x16 sensor mid next year, which should be interesting.A problem with low-res sensors around 16x16 is that looking only at the IR image it can be hard to figure out what you're looking at (i.e. relating objects in the thermal image to real objects. The 16x4 strip inserted into the phone image on the IR_Blue helps a lot as you get a visual reference on both sides.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 11:28:51 pm
content: Hmm, patent expired on a thermal imaging sensor design? I heard FLIR's patent was due to expire in 2012-2013 some time

author: Alex
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 23, 2012, 11:35:20 pm
content: On the discussion of transducer arrays I can add the TPA81, an 8x1 thermopile array I have had experience with.This sensor module can easily be panned with a servo motor, and in fact the distributor linked below has demo software for this purpose.Making qualitative measurements to e.g. lock-on a heatsource is straightforward, but making quantitative measurements is very challenging.http://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/acatalog/Thermal_Array_Sensor.htmlhttp://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/htm/tpa81tech.htmAlex

author: tecman
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 24, 2012, 01:46:08 am
content: Dave:Something you missed, or didn't know is that it has a touch screen. Makes some actions a bit easier.paul

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 24, 2012, 02:35:57 am
content: Quote from: tecman on December 24, 2012, 01:46:08 amDidn't occur to me at all to try and touch it!, and Charles didn't touch the screen when he quickly demoed it before he loaned it to me.I hadn't read the manual or web site etcDave.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 02:44:09 am
content: If the lens is quite expensive but reflective objects reflect IR quite well, why not use a curved mirror instead of a lens? After all, good telescopes always use a concave mirror as the first stage of magnification.

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 08:34:40 am
content: If you want to use a symmetric mirror, than you have to position the sensor in front of that mirror, kind of like a catadioptric system (eg. telescope). This unit would have to be sealed to protect it from dust, so you would still end up with a fairly expensive plan parallel lens in front of the mirror. You might also run into issues if you try to design it for short focal lengths.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 10:04:41 am
content: Quote from: alm on December 28, 2012, 08:34:40 am..and if you seal it you need an IR transparent window.

author: Simon Weel
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 28, 2012, 12:10:00 pm
content: My company bought the Flir E50 a couple of weeks ago to create themographic building reports. We bought the Extech MO297 with it, to measure the air humidity etc. The Flir E50 unfortunately doesn't have that capability. The brief pauses you experience when using the camera are caused by the calibration mechanism. You can hear a solenoid clicking when it covers the lens for a brief moment. See Mikes electric stuff:where Mike does a tear down and repair of a IR head mount fire-fighter camera.The Extech MO297 has a IR thermometer as well and I am really curious as how this works? Maybe you could do an article on that?Simon

author: casinada
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2012, 06:58:53 am
content: IR $399http://www.ebay.com/itm/DT-9862-Infrared-Video-Thermometer-/230902710856?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35c2dfc248

author: PA0PBZ
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2012, 09:17:05 am
content: Quote from: casinada on December 30, 2012, 06:58:53 amYeah, IR spot measurement, the video is visible light only

author: billclay
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2013, 04:10:32 pm
content: Has anyone done a review of the new Fluke VT02 Visual IR Thermometer? It looks interesting.

author: Hypernova
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 11, 2013, 01:51:05 am
content: Quote from: PA0PBZ on December 30, 2012, 09:17:05 amThat's pretty damn useless for $399.