DIY-Thermocam V2 - An open-source, do-it-yourself thermal imager

[maxbot]

DIY-Thermocam V2
An open-source, do-it-yourself thermal imager




The DIY-Thermocam is a do-it-yourself infrared camera, based on the popular FLIR Lepton long-wave-infrared array sensor. The material price of all components is at about 400€, which makes the device one of the cheapest standalone solution for thermal imaging on the market.
 
The aim of this project is to give private persons, educational institutes and companies access to a portable, affordable and customizable thermal imaging plattform.

There are various applications like finding heat leaks in the insulation of buildings, the analysis of electrical or mechanical components, the detection of persons / animals or even mounting it on a drone, together with the additional video out module.

Constructed as a self-assembly solution, the DIY-Thermocam allows you to take advantage of the versatile possibilities of thermal imaging and to save money at one go.

Everything, from software to hardware, is completely open-source! This allows everyone to modify or extend the functionalities of the device to their own needs!

For  more information, check out my website

www.diy-thermocam.net

Joe-C made his ThermoVision software compatible with the DIY-Thermocam, so you can use a lot of analysis features 

[ixfd64]

145 views and no replies?

For what it's worth, I think this is really amazing. It's also impressive that you managed to achieve what a $200,000 Indiegogo campaign couldn't.

[janoc]

I am not sure, what are you expecting? People falling over themselves over an ad?


Considering that Flir One which uses the same sensor and is not a kit, costs $250 (OK, you need a smartphone) and there is also Seek Thermal and few others, it is going to be a hard sell. Is open source nature and few features of this worth more than double the price?

Compare with these, for ex.:
http://www.thermal.com/products/

BTW, isn't Lepton 80x60 native resolution only?

Moreover, it is not even a first one - Mike Harrison made his famous miniature self-contained imager using this quite a while ago.

So I guess everyone looked at it and moved on.

[Kilrah]

The new version of the lepton is indeed 160x120.

Guess there are just so many of these things around now that interest is going down a bit especially at this price.

[maxbot]

Thanks for those first comments.

I am aware, that I can not compete with those cheap smartphone addons like the FLIR One and the Seek Thermal.
There are big companies behind those products and they are selling it in very large quantities. I am doing this project by myself and it is still only a hobby for me, so the competition can never be fair.

But I am giving my best to establish an open-source plattform, that with some help of the community, could be at least a serious alternative for a specific group of people.

[ixfd64]

I think the open-source nature of the firmware and image viewer will be a game changer. If we get enough contributors, the feature set could make this camera very competitive and cause big-name companies like FLIR and Fluke to drop their prices.

Speaking of which, one new feature that could probably be added without modifying the hardware is the ability to create "super resolution" images by stacking existing ones.

[JohnG]

I think the open-source nature of the firmware and image viewer will be a game changer. If we get enough contributors, the feature set could make this camera very competitive and cause big-name companies like FLIR and Fluke to drop their prices.

I agree with this. I can think of two things that this could enable that would be very useful indeed.

1. The ability to operate this camera from a Python program and be able to track temperatures of pixels and predefined areas as part of another program. A Python module for the camera with these type of features would be very useful.

2. A hardware modification to the case to ease the addition of lenses for close-up pictures, e.g. zooming in small PCB components.

Thanks for your work. I have a FLIR T420 for my job, and it has very good imaging capability. If I want to do anything more sophisticated, forget it. The T420 firmware is buggy and unreliable, and crashes or locks up regularly. Worse, mine is an early model with firmware that cannot be upgraded. FLIR Tools is clunky and limiting.

Also, I use my phone when I am in the lab for photos, as a calculator, and to talk to people. Since I monitor things for hours, using my phone is a non-starter. If I have to buy another phone, then the $250 ones don't look so cheap.

I hope this venture is a success. If I could justify another one, I would get this.

John

[maxbot]

Super resolution would be a very cool feature! The memory capabilities of the MCU may not be enough for that, but on the PC-side, it could be done. Just need to find a good implementation as a starting point, preferrable in c or python.

The ThermoVision software from Joe-C already allows to track pixel or areas over the time. He made his program compatible with the serial USB protocol, and it works quite well. The thermal viewer I created in Python can only show points at the moment, not areas. But lines or rectangle as measurement sources could be added in a future version of the device firmware, too.

The hardware addition for the lense also makes sense. There is another thread where someone did this for the Lepton3. He made a 3d printed part, but to reduce costs, I would try to realize it with a press-fit laser cut part like the ones I do for the enclosure. Max material thickness is 8mm for plastic, but there could be two or more layers if required by the thickness of the lense. The whole construction can then be added as an additional module to the backside of the case, attached by two or three bolts.

Thanks for all those great inputs!

[Fraser]

Be aware that the likes of the SEEK and FLIR One cameras are very much a compromise solution built down to a price. That is to say, neither the microbolometer, nor the lens is capable of really good image production when compared to the offerings that use larger microbolometer die's and lenses. Therm-App and Thermal Expert being just two examples.

Whilst I applaud the idea behind the product offered here, to me it is more of a curio as it does not use a decent core like the ULIS PICO series, or a decent lens. An open source project based on a ULIS microbolometer would have a far brighter future I believe. It would not be constrained by the LEPTON 3 limitations. There is only so much you can do with image processing. A poor data source at the front end of a system limits what can be achieved at the data output.

Sadly such a design is now too late to the market as it offers nothing new at a not insignificant price of 499 Euro's. That is a lot of money for a kit based on a limited performance thermal core. The Therm-App and Thermal Expert  both offer far superior imaging. They are compact and may be used with people's phones so can record and send images to base or clients. I bought used smart phones for only £30 to use with my FLIR One units. Only Wi-Fi is needed so even phones with failed SIM sockets work fine.

I am very sorry but I see the asking price as too high for this project to fly. Just my view, but I have spent a lot of time in the thermal camera domain.

Fraser

[maxbot]

Be aware that the likes of the SEEK and FLIR One cameras are very much a compromise solution built down to a price. That is to say, neither the microbolometer, nor the lens is capable of really good image production when compared to the offerings that use larger microbolometer die's and lenses. Therm-App and Thermal Expert being just two examples.

Whilst I applaud the idea behind the product offered here, to me it is more of a curio as it does not use a decent core like the ULIS PICO series, or a decent lens. An open source project based on a ULIS microbolometer would have a far brighter future I believe. It would not be constrained by the LEPTON 3 limitations. There is only so much you can do with image processing. A poor data source at the front end of a system limits what can be achieved at the data output.

Sadly such a design is now too late to the market as it offers nothing new at a not insignificant price of 499 Euro's. That is a lot of money for a kit based on a limited performance thermal core. The Therm-App and Thermal Expert  both offer far superior imaging. They are compact and may be used with people's phones so can record and send images to base or clients. I bought used smart phones for only £30 to use with my FLIR One units. Only Wi-Fi is needed so even phones with failed SIM sockets work fine.

I am very sorry but I see the asking price as too high for this project to fly. Just my view, but I have spent a lot of time in the thermal camera domain.

Fraser

Thanks for this opinion Fraser. The Lepton cores are the only ones I have access to as a student at the moment. I found only limited info about the ULIS pico series, are they already on the market and at what price ? Appearantly they communicate over I2C, so it would not be too hard to adjust the Thermocam system to support it.

I can not drop the price any lower, because my win margin is already very small. I pack up and assemble all the devices on my own, which needs a lot of time and work. The project was never designated to be a big one, because it's only a hobby for me apart from my full-time studies.

[Fraser]

I wish to take nothing away from your efforts and I do understand why the price is what it is. I am providing only my own view and not that of the DIY maker fraternity who may embrace such a project due to its open source nature.

The problem you face is that, from my perspective, the thermal camera market has been changed by the arrival of SEEK, FLIR One, Therm-App and Thermal Expert. I would have happily paid 499 Euro's for a functioning thermal camera with 160 X 120 pixels a few years ago. Then the amazing FLIR E4 upgrade came about and the release of budget smart phone cameras at amazing prices. Yes they were a compromised budget orientated product but now anyone can see in the thermal domain for around $250 plus their Smart phone.

I collect thermal cameras and own many very high quality industrial cameras from respectable brands such as FLIR, E2V, NEC AVIO and TESTO. They cost many thousands of Dollars new and far outperform the budget offerings on the market today. If I tried to sell them one at at the moment, I would be lucky to get the 499 Euro's that you are asking for your DIY unit. The market has either been flooded with cheap thermal imaging technology or it has lost interest in such as another passing phase. As we know from the VHS vs BETAMAX video recorder battle, sometimes the public just want cheap and not best bang per Buck !

I wish you the very best with your project but felt I should comment in order to manage your expectations a little.

Fraser

[maxbot]

I wish to take nothing away from your efforts and I do understand why the price is what it is. I am providing only my own view and not that of the DIY maker fraternity who may embrace such a project due to its open source nature.

The problem you face is that, from my perspective, the thermal camera market has been changed by the arrival of SEEK, FLIR One, Therm-App and Thermal Expert. I would have happily paid 499 Euro's for a functioning thermal camera with 160 X 120 pixels a few years ago. Then the amazing FLIR E4 upgrade came about and the release of budget smart phone cameras at amazing prices. Yes they were a compromised budget orientated product but now anyone can see in the thermal domain for around $250 plus their Smart phone.

I collect thermal cameras and own many very high quality industrial cameras from respectable brands such as FLIR, E2V, NEC AVIO and TESTO. They cost many thousands of Dollars new and far outperform the budget offerings on the market today. If I tried to sell them one at at the moment, I would be lucky to get the 499 Euro's that you are asking for your DIY unit. The market has either been flooded with cheap thermal imaging technology or it has lost interest in such as another passing phase. As we know from the VHS vs BETAMAX video recorder battle, sometimes the public just want cheap and not best bang per Buck !

I wish you the very best with your project but felt I should comment in order to manage your expectations a little.

Fraser

And I am grateful for your honest and valuable opinion.

The DIY-Thermocam is a result of my bachelor thesis, and I have been building low-cost thermal imagers for a long time now. I started with the Cheap-Thermocam V1 back in 2011 (http://hackaday.com/2011/03/09/arduino-thermo-cam/), which made it up to V3 in 2014 (http://hackaday.com/2014/06/04/cheap-thermocam-gets-an-impressive-rehaul/). For the V4 and the thesis I then switched to the Lepton2, which was brand-new at that time. The Cheap-Thermocam V4 was renamend into DIY-Thermocam, because by selling most of the devices as kits, I can save some work and also give the buyers a better insight into the device they later use.

So I am totally aware the market is not big, but it's enough for me and I do not expect more. Many of my customers are educational institutes such as universities or research teams, which use the DIY-Thermocam because they get a good access to all the raw data there and can program their own analysis methods based on that. But there are also private persons, which do believe in the project and small companies, who maybe want to build their own solutions and need a starting point.

I contacted ULIS concerning their pico series in order to learn more about their technical specifications and the price range, let's see if they will respond.

[ixfd64]

A lot of companies will gladly support academic research and may be willing to offer discounts to students. You'd probably have an even better chance of getting one if you asked a professor to vouch for you.

[janoc]

A lot of companies will gladly support academic research and may be willing to offer discounts to students. You'd probably have an even better chance of getting one if you asked a professor to vouch for you.

You can't build a commercial product like the OP is trying to do on something like that.

And as far as forcing FLIR or FLUKE to drop prices, because there is a $500 kit available - dream on, guys. People buying FLIR or FLUKE don't want to tinker with kits or firmware. They usually need the camera for actual work - and that's where the "just works" (at least most of the time), the ruggedness of the device and after sale support/service come into play. The price is much less of a concern - the camera will pay for itself quickly.  It is the same as why people keep buying expensive Fluke multimeters - not necessarily because they are better or cheaper than others, but because they are a known and proven quantity. A kit from a one-man company that may disappear tomorrow whose only selling point is price and open source firmware has little chance there.

The open source firmware is cool, but that is something mostly of interest to hobbyists (especially as it is Arduino based). And for a hobbyist interested in a thermal camera $500 is simply too much for a new toy. I am not aware of a hobby where a thermal camera would be something that one needs all the time to justify such expense. Even the $250 for the Flir One is a lot for essentially a toy, but easier to swallow than the $500-600 asked here.

I understand that the OP cannot lower the price any more, but that's because they are buying the sensors and everything else at retail prices. Of course it won't be competitive then. However, that is not my problem as a potential client.

I just don't see this as a commercially viable product. Certainly a cool project, though!

[Bill W]

The Lepton cores are the only ones I have access to as a student at the moment. I found only limited info about the ULIS pico series, are they already on the market and at what price ? Apparently they communicate over I2C, so it would not be too hard to adjust the Thermocam system to support it.

The ULIS data output is not I2C, it is semi-parallel.  Only the control protocol is I2C.
These are after all 384x288 pixels, outputting 14 bit uncorrected data at 50Hz (ie about 7MHz)

Bill

www.fire-tics.co.uk

[maxbot]

The integration of the ULIS sensor would be very interesting, but I will stick with the Lepton3 sensor for the next time.

I recently published the USB communication protocol on the website, so it's now easier to get access to the raw data from the PC or develop own applications for the device.

Joe-C also added a lot of new features to his ThermoVision editing and analysis software for the DIY-Thermocam, which adds a great value to the already awesome program.

[maxbot]

Version 2 of the DIY-Thermocam has been released!

It features a much more powerful processor based on the Teensy 3.6, a faster and better visual camera as well as an exchangeable internal storage.

[ruzze]

Congratulations for your awesome project   

[maxbot]

Congratulations for your awesome project   

Thank you very much 

I changed the project website to make it more transparent. Now, everything is open-source, and there is a nice list where you can buy all the required parts on your own.

[Jake]

Any thoughts of using the new PICO 1024 x 768 by ULIS. This chip would put the thermal imager ahead of most $5000 cameras

[Fraser]

Obtaining a high resolution ULIS PICO microbolometer is not that easy. It is covered by Dual Use technology regulations and ULIS do not supply direct to the public.

Whilst I agree that a project built around one of the excellent ULIS sensors would be amazing, the challenges in obtaining suitable optics and the microbolometer would be great.

Fraser