TC001 plus - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: artag
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 26, 2024, 01:13:11 pm
content: I got a Topdon TC001 plus, mainly for the wide angle lens compared with the TS001.Given that it uses the same app, it's unsurprisingly similar and presumably even more liken the TC001. The case is almost the same apart from the lens. It also doesn't have shaped sides (the TS001 has indentations which I'd considered using in a fixing clamp) and has a blue LED on one end (does the TC001 ?). Oddly, there are some differences in the app : with the TS001 there are 'temperature' and 'observe' choices at the top of the page. The 'observe' choice removes the temperature key from the right of the display. No such switch appears on the TC001+ and I can't work out how to remove that bar. I don't like the app much, it uses too many meaningless icons.The visible light camera is only claimed at 1 megapixel but this seems to sufficient to give edge detail. It looks better than that when used as a simple visible light camera but perhaps that's just on the small phone screen.There's a slightly odd visual effect on the mixed mode image. The edge lines from the visible light camera are white and dim as the camera moves, coming back to full strength when stationary. Under some circumstances there's a slight lag that offsets the two images and I speculate they did this dimming trick to hide that. There are two different mixed images : one is the IRv image with added white edge lines and the other is a visible light image with coloured shading. I don't find either of them as visually attractive as the plain IR but they may be helpful where the environment reduces the amount of IR available.

author: Mike_91
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: January 15, 2025, 03:50:23 pm
content: Hi,Do you have any more thoughts about your TC001 Plus worth sharing?Did you notice an issue with uneven self-heating where one corner gets way hotter than the opposite side after some time?There is a thread on reddit about this ( "Topdon TC001 Plus self heating gradient" ) and also some reviews on Amazon talk about it.I'm interested in this camera, mainly because of its dual lens design, which gives similar functionality to FLIR cameras with MSX, that I have experience with (and what I was missing in InfiRay P2 Pro I had also worked with). But the mentioned design flaw put me off from buying it at the moment.

author: artag
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2025, 05:47:05 pm
content: I haven't noticed that yet, but I've tended to use it for short periods only. How does it show up ? I would have expected the shutter to compensate but perhaps that's not enough if it's bad.

author: Mike_91
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: January 15, 2025, 06:31:39 pm
content: From reddit post:QuoteAnd an example photo from the same post:

author: Mike_91
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: February 21, 2025, 09:18:41 pm
content: In the reddit thread I had linked earlier, someone posted a link to Topdon's website about how to calibrate their smartphone cameras:https://community.topdon.com/detail?id=177&type=1However, one person says it worked, another one says it didn't help much.On YT there's a "review-like" video of it, where this self-heating issue is clearly visible:I'm occasionally checking the internet for some more info about TC001 Plus, on paper it's great, but with this design flaw I'm not convinced to get one.

author: artag
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 25, 2025, 09:14:22 pm
content: On that video, do you mean the apparent warmer zone on lower left rather than upper right as described in the reddit post ? Only apparent in the last few seconds as it's unclear from the majority of the video as to whether that's just a warm area of floor, whereas in the outdoor shot the warm area does seem to follow the sensor movement.It might be that those are actually both the same corner of the sensor, or perhaps there's a general problem applying to the corners. I'd even wonder if it's related to warming of the camera itself by the user's hands.I'll try to set up a test myself with no adjacent source of heat such as a hand or a phone. What's an appropriate target ? I guess maybe a metal sheet covered in a non-reflecting (in lwir) paint. Or a view into a small closed metal object. Or just blocking the lens with something of constant temperature and opacity.I used it quite briefly for looking at a human body filling about 80% of the frame in a location that wasn't very thermally stable. I had an unrelated problem with the application that meant I didn't even run it for long and haven't got around to studying further, so I'm sorry for my lack of followup. I appreciate the report and will eventually try to provide more information.I actually started with a TS001 but it had too narrow a FOV to be ideal and I got the TC001+ to try instead. So I can compare both. They're fairly similar mechanically. I'm mostly interested in processing the images using something otyher than the included app so compensation within that is pretty useless to me. However if it's possible to compensate using only the data supplied over USB I may be able to do that.

author: Mike_91
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: March 03, 2025, 05:41:25 pm
content: Quote from: artag on February 25, 2025, 09:14:22 pmYes, that's exactly it. I think the difference between reddit and this video might be the orientation of the camera, i.e. how it's held - probably it's the same sensor corner in both cases, but one has the image rotated 180 deg. I saw many users reporting the same issue, there's more photos from Amazon customers (USA). I don't think one could warm up the camera with their hands to cause such effect, no way, the heat has be coming from the electronics inside.On the other hand, I never saw that on TC001 (the thermal lens only model), neither on Infiray P2 Pro - and the P2 I've been using myself, many times it was left on for prolonged times and there were no hot corners or anything like that.And on a side note, artag, is it possible to hide the scale from the screen in Topinfrared app?