IR for home/hobby use - current best bang for buck - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: giantsean
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 05, 2018, 07:51:20 pm
content: Hey All,I have been casually looking for an IR camera for basic homeowner use, anything and everything you can imagine. since last winter or so. Summer diverted my attention but since it's winter again soon, my thoughts moved back to this.I had left off hoping to get a used Flir Ex and hack, but that is a bit out of my budget. I read the pros and cons of the rest and more or less thought I had settled on the Seek Compact Pro as best overall value (among Flir One, Milwaukee handheld, anything Chinese). TE and TA seemed a bit out of reach (and having lived in Asia before I wasn't looking forward to local dealer markups).That said, there are a lot of cons to the Compact Pro... durability, software, quality variances, engineered dead pixels, post sales support/warranty drama, etc. On the other hand, for home use, does anyone see a better bang for the buck? It seems the IR camera marketplace isn't quite as dynamic as those for other electronic products... was hoping to have more from which to choose, but worst case hopefully they have improved what they had!Thanks!

author: Vipitis
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2018, 01:17:50 am
content: If you are okay with a phone dongle, you should consider the ThermExpert TE-M1. That should be better in quality than the Seek. But still is a dongle, so there won't be any great durability.I don't know if it is available in the US.

author: mahony
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 06, 2018, 10:29:39 am
content: If you are on a tight budget you may try to get a cheap (not 100$/€+) defective FLIR One G2 and pull out the Lepton core and get one of the breakout boards plus a Raspberry PI or Teensy or STM32 or … whatever can handle the SPI and I²C communications. I have two running on either a Raspberry Zero, 3B and a Teensy 3.6. Depending on the price for a dead-ish FLIR One G2 you can get away with less than 150$/€ all in all.

author: giantsean
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 08, 2018, 01:35:09 am
content: Thanks. I'm not too bad w/ the soldering iron but I'm far from an EE. If there are plans floating around it never hurts to look though.

author: rjp
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2018, 01:43:42 am
content: Id like to piggy back this with a question on USB-C - they all seem to be USB-Micro with dodgy adaptors which is something Id want to avoid at all costs.Are their any decent (cheapish) ones that have USB-C yet ?

author: Bill W
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2018, 08:39:46 pm
content: The other option for a camera rather than a phone dongle would be second hand fire cameras, and strip the core. Something like a Bullard T3 will yield a Raytheon ASi of some vintage.I am not able to help you, as I have yet to work out UK export paperwork.Bill

author: Teun
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 14, 2019, 09:56:47 am
content: I use the Seek Compact Pro as a PCB inspection device at work. It's not a very professional set up but for general purposes it's not all that bad.Personally I would have liked it to send raw data to a PC for analysis and documentation but my boss thought otherwise. But all in all it does have some very usable features in it.

author: johnparker
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: March 15, 2019, 03:06:18 am
content: Bought the PerfectPrime IR0018 recently and used it to check the insulation around the house. Considering it's relatively low price, the resoultion is decent. Quite happy with it so far.Not sure if it can be used more than once but they gave me this 5% discount code (5DHIOWHSK) if anyone is interested.https://perfectprime.com/products/ir0018

author: Ben321
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 28, 2019, 06:49:47 am
content: Seek Compact Pro for Android devices. That's what I use, and it's good enough for most uses, as long as you don't need to access the raw radiometric data after taking the picture. It offers 320x240 thermal resolution (something that before the Seek existed, would have cost THOUSANDS of dollars from any other company). Seek Compact Pro is only $365.46