So where do the sensors for all the Chinese thermal cams come from? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Ben321
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2019, 12:55:37 am
content: After the release of the Seek Thermal Compact and the FLIR One, there suddenly came a truckload of Chinese stuff, frequently without even a company name or even product name. The name of the product is usually just a description of the product rather than a catchy name like normal companies usually give their products. These thermal imagers from China are usually called something very generic like "Thermal Imager" or "Thermal Camera" (Unlike ones from normal companies that are called things like "Thermacam"). And these are usually sold on eBay (and a few on Amazon). So why did these Chinese companies all of a sudden start making this stuff when they saw other companies like FLIR and Seek making cheep thermal cams? Was it just to jump into the market for cheap thermal cameras that they just discovered existed?Or did this happen because they are actually making their own hardware from ripped off components from FLIR and Seek, so the moment Seek and FLIR started making these, it mean there was now there was hardware available for the Chinese to analyze, reverse engineer, and make bootleg copies of? Do the Chinese just rip apart the Seek Compacts and FLIR Ones (as well as buying standalone Leptons) and then take these cores and build their own cameras around them? Or did Seek and FLIR just reveal a new market that the Chinese weren't aware of before, but once made aware of it they jumped into it, making their own Chinese VOx microbolometers from scratch, and then building their Chinese thermal cameras around these Chinese microbolometers?

author: MIT_TIM
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: December 26, 2019, 07:37:03 am
content: I have also realized this appearance. At first, I think all the Chinese thermal cameras are copies. But after searching for some information, I found that some of them have independent property rights. One of them, IRay Technology, even released a 10-micron detector in 2019 by themselves. That is really astonishing. But there are few overseas promoting about them.

author: johnelot
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2019, 09:01:30 am
content: i just got a 640 one thru alibaba and after looking and browsing a lot - i think quite a few chinese companies proberbly buy the detectors from such as ulis then add the boards on the back of them in china but i dont think the sellers are the ones making them , i think they are made in other factories impossible to find.things seem to be made in china without any makers id, on them at all - perhaps because government controlled business just dont need advertising or publicity - just a different economic system to what we are used to.i got the impression guide , iray and some might actually make things themselves .

author: Vipitis
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2019, 09:10:54 am
content: some products use OEM cores. Others built their own cores and some even their own detectors. The big push is usually military. The market over there isn't very transparent for foregeirs

author: Bill W
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 27, 2019, 09:50:52 pm
content: For a start the following are known:FLIR One electronics is made in China, so will have been copied.ULIS sensors shipped to China have been copied, and also the design converted to VOx, including some deficiencies.ISG cores and cameras were built in China and copied (Guide-IR Wuhan)E2V cameras were built in China (for China) so may have been copied, certainly rip offs of the 'TT' ergonomics exist.Bill

author: All Seeing Eye
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2019, 01:04:11 pm
content: Copy this word is not appropriate, in the absence of evidence, in fact is that the Chinese are too smart, you will get in the United States in a middle school, the top of the results are basically Chinese, can you say that his test high score is plagiarism of your child? Just as china's papermaking spread a thousand years ago, giving ordinary people access to education, china's mastery of thermal imaging technology is a good boon to our consumers.

author: Vipitis
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2019, 03:55:31 pm
content: while the word "copying" or the phrase "made in china" are subject to a huge campaign for "created in china" instead. You cannot deny the huge influence ULIS pixel design has had to the chinese offerings. Same thing in Russia. They built cores with ULIS detectors and few years later they start to make their own detectors. The microscopic structure to the pixels reveals the similarity- your elementary school analogy doesn't go very far in decades of military research funding.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 28, 2019, 04:09:49 pm
content: Quote from: Vipitis on December 28, 2019, 03:55:31 pmThe microscopic structures of most advanced devices look similar to the competition. Physics eventually pushes everyone in roughly the same direction.

author: Bill W
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2019, 10:54:01 am
content: Quote from: blueskull on December 28, 2019, 04:16:24 pmIndeed, the question is though why are the IRay detectors in the same packages as older ULIS sensors, when these are not the most suited packages to the sensor if you were designing from the ground up and knew what you were doing ?Bill

author: agiorgitis
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: December 30, 2019, 04:32:51 pm
content: 9hz might be a local directive to some countries only. Other countries probably don't give a ... about 9hz or such things.

author: Bill W
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 31, 2019, 12:27:11 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on December 31, 2019, 01:38:19 amITAR is not the US implementation of Wassenaar, ITAR is the US 'military list'ITAR is run by the US State DepartmentThe US implementation of Wassenaar is the 'EAR' list for dual use itemshttps://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/regulations/export-administration-regulations-earEAR is run by the US Dept of CommerceWhere it gets messy is that Commerce tend to do what they are told by State, so Commerce licenses often have more restrictions in them than you would get from a 'pure' Wassenaar implementation such as the UK. Where thermal cameras are concerned, an EAR license for a 30Hz core may have a 'resale permission' clause included while the UK etc will usually rely on the Wassenaar rules being applied in the destination country, as long as it is also a Wassenaar signatory.Bill

author: Fraser
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 31, 2019, 01:14:13 pm
content: Just as an example of how strict the rules are in the USA and that they are still implemented.....I purchased a 160 x 120 pixel 30 FPS MSA 5000 series camera from a USA seller a while ago. It was a well beaten up fire fighting camera but contained a lovely Indigo Omega (FLIR A10 Micron) core. The camera took a long time to get to me.Upon checking the tracking of the unit through the various stages of shipping I found that the USA Customs authorities held onto it for over a week. It was then released and shipped to the UK. Our UK customs then stopped the parcel and held onto it for mother week. It was then released and shipped to me. I paid the customs fees etc as it had a true value on the declaration and not something silly like $10 ! The customs declaration on the package clearly identified the contents as a “Thermal Camera”. The parcel was covered in official tape revealing it. The first lot was US inspection tape and the second lot over the top was UK inspection tape. There were no comments on the parcel but the Royal Mail chap who handed it to me commented that he sees this whenever the contents of a parcel have caused concern in the USA. The UL customs see this and take a greater interest in the contents as well ! It would appear that the US postal inspectors (outgoing) saw the words thermal camera and likely did some checks to see whether it was permitted to leave the USA and be shipped to the UK. I was lucky it did get released.Another forum member has an Israeli QVGA phone dongle thermal camera with a broken connector and he has tried to ship it back to Israel on two occasions. The parcel was turned back at the export checks stage and sent back to him. The Americans still take the thermal imaging regulations very seriously and enforce them.I understand that ULIS, being a European manufacturer of Microbolomters, is an easier company to work with for non USA camera manufacturers as Wassenaar is applied with intelligenceUsing a USA sourced microbolometer likely involves more ‘red tape’ and the ever present risk that the American regulations will be tightened further in time of perceived threat against the USA. Not a great situation for a manufacturer who build a design around a single source component !It is worthy of note that ULIS have published several papers in the public domain that provide interesting technical details of their Microbolometer designs. The level of detail provided far exceeds anything that I have seen from a US based microbolometer manufacturer. I was pleased to find such documents but having searched in vain for similar for US microbolometers I realised just how controlled such information is in the USA. I doubt you will find much information in the public domain on Raytheon microbolometer design and construction even for obsolete models. There have been ‘leaks’ of document sets for the 2000, 3000 and 4000 series cores but these were originally only supplied to approved customers. Those documents do not detail the construction or biasing of the microbolometers though. ULIS do publish such detailed information and the data sheets for several ULIS microbolometers have been found on the Chinese version of Google. I know because I found and downloaded them ! There is even a detailed data sheet for a 1024 x 768 Pixel ULIS microbolometer that is very detailed in its content and not just a sales brochure. That data sheet should not be in the public domain under a Wassenaar. How the Chinese web site came to have it is open to conjecture.I would never mess with the U.S BIS, they have teeth and know how to use them. I suspect that is why we are seeing microbolomter designs very similar to ULIS products rather than USA sourced microbolometers. ULIS, France are a more helpful supplier and provide more data on their products design.Fraser