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SEEK SCAN Covid-19 countermeasure system - Teardown by Fraser
Posted by Fraser on 17 Jul, 2023 22:07 -
When SEEK Thermal first released their "SEEK SCAN" system as a countermeasure to the Covid-19 Pandemic, I was interested to see what they had created and how they had overcome some of the challenges of a system intended to measure humans surface temperature with accuracy. Very little was published on the actual technical design at the time so I ha to guess what was inside the casings of the system. Thanks to my finding a brand new SEEK SCAN at a very good price, I will now publish a teardown so that others are no longer guessing about the SEEK Thermal design hardware that 'hides' within the casings.
What follows is my original guess as to the design from having looked at published documentation and images.... was I close, or wide of the mark ? ... let us find out.
It was clear that the SEEK SCAN designers recognised that their camera cores would not be capable of the measurement accuracy required for an application that required the accurate measurement of a humans surface temperature. Their response to this problem was excellent as they used a temperature reference in the thermal cameras field of view that could be used by software to produce very accurate temperature measurements. This technique of using a known temperature source when measuring targets temperatures is well known and understood. A thermal imaging camera normally has a specification stating a measurement accuracy of +/-2C or 2%, whichever is greater. With a temperature reference of known accuracy, this specification may be greatly improved and the level of uncertainty with measurements drops to far more precise levels. In the case of the SEEK SCAN, it is stated as making measurements with an accuracy of +/- 0.3C. Some manufacturers of Covid-19 countermeasure systems tried to operate systems without a temperature reference in the field of view and their measurements were found to be very unreliable. So from the start we see that SEEK Thermal had the right idea regarding creating an accurate temperature measurement system.
The problem with Thermal Camera temperature measurement systems intended for Covid-19 countermeasure duties is cost. The cost of the systems had to be affordable for the intended customer base and predicted sales. SEEK Thermal wanted to keep costs as low as possible to compete in the market segment and this lead to some clever decisions on their part, but more of that later. It was clear to me at the time that the rapid response to the Covid-19 Pandemic would include thermal imaging technology but that new systems would need to be designed, and supplied quickly. For manufacturers it would be both a design challenge and race to bring a product to market before competitors. This would lead to use of current building blocks in novel ways in order to reduce development time. As was seen at the time, manufacturers of thermal imaging cameras adapted their current, proven, products for Covid-19 temperature scanning duties.... some did this well, others not so well !
SEEK Thermal were no different. They already had a well populated stable of thermal imaging products and cores that could be called upon by the R&D team for Covid-19 product development. Whilst the R&D team could have opted to adapt the standard "Classic" mobile phone dongle to their needs and possible use a mobile phone host, they opted to go with a PC Host and associated software. The connectivity to the PC Host was via USB so I deduced that all they needed to do was use the guts of a "Classic" camera or a dedicated core in a new casing. The addition f a USB webcam gave their product dual spectrum capability to aid target positioning, face mask detection and identification, if required. What I was not certain of was whether SEEK Thermal had used the "CLASSIC" dongle camera style of 'open PCB' or the more compact, buy likely more expensive, MOSAIC core package. We shall soon see.
So I had guessed at a USB SEEK Thermal Core and a common USB PCB format Webcam in the SEEK SCAN head.... but it looked too large for just those two modules so maybe there was some image and/or situational processing going on at the camera head ?
Now to the temperature reference.... these are normally called a Black Body temperature reference, source or emitter. They create a known temperature at their emission plate and have known emissivity. As such they may be used to test a thermal cameras temperature measurement accuracy, calibrate a cameras measurement systems or act as a temperature reference in a live measurement system. The challenge when designing such a temperature reference is in creating a unit that remains accurate in varying operating conditions. The units emission plate must stay at the set temperature and be resistant to ambient temperature changes, air movements etc. Modern PID temperature controllers can easily manage the temperature of the emission plate but you do need a decent quality PID controller for the task. The effects of ambient temperature and air movements can be somewhat harder to deal with for the Black Body designer and sometimes compromises are made. The designer may stipulate correct deployment and use of the Black Body in order that it remains accurate, rather than trying to design a Black Body that can cope with anything thrown at it. I was interested to see how SEEK Thermal had addressed this challenge but I could find no information on their Black Body temperature reference. The unit looked very compact and neat but I could not see the construction used within it. I was left to guess that the unit contained a painted aluminium plate on the rear of which a polyimide foil heater was attached and driven by some form of electronic temperature controller. The temperature controller needs to be very accurate in this application so I thought it unlikely to be analogue in nature. A small microcontroller reading a thermistor via its internal ADC, and an output PWM driving the heater via a transistor, came to mind. The unit is fixed temperature so a small microcontroller could easily meet the needs of the unit. The problem I had with the SEEK Thermal design was the lack of depth to the unit. There does not appear to be enough depth to the plate section for insulation around and behind it, to aid temperature stability, and the very open front design does nothing to mitigate air currents impacting heat loss of the emission plate. I was left doubting the real world performance of eth SEEK Thermal Black Body reference design. I was very keen to find out what his within that Black Body's casing but never saw a teardown on line or a description of the design from the owner of such I would have to wait until today to get the answers to some of my questions. The design is not quite as I expected but more of that later
I am not going to delve into the software aspects of this SEEK SCAN system in this teardown as this is a hardware teardown to show how SEEK Thermal created a human body temperature measurement system in a short period of time whilst ensuring that its measurements were useful, rather than the "best guess" of some lesser designs.
Now I am going to be cruel to you, dear reader, it is late here in the UK so I am an going to delay uploading the teardown images until tomorrow .... don't you just hate it when people do this !
Teardown pictures to follow
Fraser
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The SEEK SCAN Brochure in PDF format......
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Let the teardown begin !
First the camera head and then the Black Body reference.
The rear panel of the camera head is held in place with four self tapping screws and there are no hidden fixings.
Inside the casing there are three parts.... the thermal imaging core, the webcam PCB and a USB 2.0 Hub PCB
The thermal imaging core is the standard Seek Thermal MOSAIC self contained USB module. The Webcam is an inexpensive HBV-1517 1.3MP module with USB output. The two cameras are USB so they need a USB hub to couple them to a single socket on the head assembly. This Hub function is provided by the Terminus FE8.1 USB 2.0 4 port Hub IC that is mounted on a interconnect PCB at the rear of the camera head.
Nothing else but air in the camera head.
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Detail of the Seek MOSAIC series core.....
The Seek Mosaic core is equipped with the standard processor PCB seen on other MOSAIC cores. The final picture of the core tries to capture the processor PCB's ID, but it is blurred on the silkscreen. I believe it to be "PCB604 Rev B 15 March 2016"
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Detail of the HBV-1517 1.3MP webcam.......
This is just a generic Chinese webcam board that may be adapted to the customers needs. Note the unpopulated LED positions for IR/White Light illumination. $4 from Aliexpress !
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Detail of the USB Hub and interconnectivity PCB......
This PCB hosts the Terminus FE8.1 USB 2.0 4 port hub IC. The PCB is equipped with the required connectors to match the needs of the Seek MOSAIC (FFC) and the HBV-1517 webcam (simple cable interconnect). The connection to the outside world is a USB-C socket. There are no components of interest on the rear of the PCB.
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Now to the Black Body Temperature reference....
As already stated, I had no information on this units design and could only guess at what was inside the unit. We now find out in the following teardown that the unit is far from optimal for a general use Black Body, yet its unusual design does meet the needs of the SEEK SCAN requirements. I was close in my guess as to what was inside this units casing but there was a surprise ! Lets get to the photos......
The rear panel of the Black Body is held in place with four self tapping screws and there are no hidden fixings.
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So we discover that the SEEK SCAN Black Body temperature reference contains a single copper clad PCB ! No aluminium emission plate as I had expected but a mall microcontroller is present as I thought might be the case. I will delve into the heater and emission plate design later but let us look at the active components first.
The microcontroller used in this unit is the ARM Cortex M0 LPC811 by NXP. This is equipped with UART (x2), I2C and SPI interfaces plus 4 GPIO pins that may be used to produce PWM. The temperature sensor turns out to be a clever digital device that we can see soldered to the front face of the Black Body. It could be something like the TE TSYS03 that communicates its temperature to a host via I2C. Its identity is unknown as it has been painted with high emissivity paint that i will not be removing. The power for the Black Body is provided by a 5V 2A plug-pack unit (not a USB type) A TLV70033DDCR (Marked 0DN) 200mA LDO regulator powers the LPC811. The heater is driven by the LPC811 output via a transistor marked "N7" that has not been identified as a specific part number yet. The heater measures approximately 4 Ohms resistance and will be driven from the main 5V supply rail and not the LDO regulator. A bi-colour LED is used to show the temperature status of the black Body. This temperature controller design appears well suited to a single temperature Black Body temperature reference and the designer has cleverly incorporated it into a single PCB format fro production efficiency and low cost.
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So where is the heater in the Black Body temperature reference ?
This is where things get interesting as I had expected to find a Polyimide foil heater on the rear of an aluminium emission plate. What I found was a PCB and no obvious heater or emission plate. This is where the designer made compromises to keep the design cheap and simple. They only got away with this design because of its specific role and operating temperature. It is not suitable for a general purpose variable temperature Black Body unless the emission plate temperature is kept low. Remember the temperature controller resides on the same PCB !
The PCB, on first glance, appears to be a double sided piece of FR4 fibreglass copper clad PCB. There is large area of copper on the rear and a carefully crafted area of copper on the front of the PCB that integrates the temperature controller components, including the temperature sensor.
There is no evidence of a heater visible to the eye except some PCB via's that clearly handle some current and are connected to the power rail and a transistor that is driven by the microcontroller. The Heater is hidden from view because it is INSIDE the layers of the PCB ! The heater will be a serpentine type created on an inner layer of this PCB using copper as the heater conductor. The PCB may be a 3 layer type or it could have additional layers for copper pours to increase its thermal density. This use of a copper serpentine heater etched into a PCB is common on 3D printer heated build plates, so the technique is not that novel, but it is unexpected in this Black Body temperature reference. Teh heater resistance is around 4 Ohms and i expect it to be driven using a PWM signal from the microcontroller.
The heater will warm the whole PCB to its required operating temperature and the front copper pour works with the high emissivity paint to present a flat thermal reference to the SEEK SCAN camera. The resolution of the camera used in this product is low enough to hide the temperature sensor and associated data lines from view at the expected operating distance. The multi layer PCB that accommodates the microcontroller based temperature controller is the whole emission plate in this design. It will have thermal density so the PID function of the microcontroller will be able to maintain the emission plate surface temperature with some precision. The relatively low thermal density of the PCB will permit a fast response to a changing ambient temperature. We can only assume that SEEK Thermal did plenty of testing on this black Body design to fine tune the PID settings to meet the require temperature accuracy and stability criteria. I may well test the unit using a logging IR thermometer
The Black Body will operate at a temperature above that of a human and most ambient environments. It does not have the ability to cool its emission plate, only to apply energy to heat it. As such, this Black Body will have limitations placed on the environment in which it may be used in terms of temperature. The likely temperature produced by this Black Body will be somewhere in the range 40 Celsius to 45 Celsius. Remember that the microcontroller will experience this heating as well. The microcontroller was positioned towards the edge of the PCB to reduce thermal contamination at that corner of the emission plate as the microcontroller will generate its own heat. A thin foam thermal insulator is placed between the rear of the PCB and the metal rear panel of the Black Body. The insulator prevents the metal rear panel acting like a heat sink and helps to thermally isolate the PCB from its surroundings a little. The plastic frame of the Black Body will also be a reasonable thermal insulator. A “thermal break” is visible around the perimeter of the emission plate. How effective this would be, I do not know bit SEEK Thermal did it for a reason so it must surely aid the performance.
The Black body emission plate is pretty much open to ambient air so it could be influenced by air movement and positioning away from sources of significant air movement would be important.
So there you have it, an unusual Black Body design and not what I had expected in some areas, such as the heater and emission plate.
Fraser
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For those readers wondering what I mean when I call the heater a “Serpentine” type, I attach some pictures of this type of heater. A Meandering element is another way to describe such heaters and they can be created on PCB using copper or as flexible Polyimide heaters using all manner of element materials to suit the application.
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The good news about the camera head design is that it contains standard USB modules so may be repurposed rather than having to use the SEEK SCAN dedicated COVID-19 fever detection software. I have the MOSAIC core ICD and SDK so can drive it directly from that on my PC. The Black Body will make an interesting addition to my stable of Black Bodies and a portable quick check source. It is unsuited to modification for other temperatures though. For that, I will modify the Dahua Fever detection system Black Bodies that are in a completely different league to the simple SEEK Thermal design.
Fraser -
The SEEK Thermal MOSAIC core used in the SEEK SCAN uses the same processor PCB, and likely the same microbolometer PCB, as that used in the HTi HT-A1 thermal camera. The processor PCB is the PCB604, Rev B, 15 March 2016.
The attached picture shows the thermal core from the HT-A1.
https://hackaday.com/tag/ht-a1/
I have been calling the thermal core the “MOSAIC” but I believe this core actually predates the introduction of the “MOSAIC” branding by SEEK Thermal. The later MOSAIC cores may differ from this core in some ways. I believe the core that we are seeing in the SEEK SCAN is given the designation “J3-604”.
Fraser
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Good job, I saw that on ebay...
I'm putting Seek to my banning list after seeing them use massive Chinese parts for several of their products.
Thank you for your effort! -
If anyone wants one of these SEEK Scan kits, they are reasonably priced on eBay.com at the moment....$113 for a new kit !
https://www.ebay.com/itm/394574014900?
and $124 here....
https://www.ebay.com/itm/295579917963?
Cheaper than the Seek Thermal MOSAIC evaluation module plus you get a Black Body measurement accuracy check source included in the deal !
Mine came to me for a similar price from a UK based company. It looks like stock is being dumped due to lack of demand.
Fraser
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...
I am not going to delve into the software aspects of this SEEK SCAN system in this teardown as this is a hardware teardown to show how SEEK Thermal created a human body temperature measurement system in a short period of time whilst ensuring that its measurements were useful, rather than the "best guess" of some lesser designs.
...
Fraser
In the event that you do drive the thing with the SDK, the big question is if you can get the full temperature range out of it---or is the thing perhaps biased different than the standard core so as to make that not possible? -
If anyone wants one of these SEEK Scan kits, they are reasonably priced on eBay.com at the moment....$113 for a new kit !
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Mine came to me for a similar price from a UK based company. It looks like stock is being dumped due to lack of demand.
Fraser
This one by any chance ?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304666541423
Bill -
Yes, but I offered £120 and it was accepted
Fraser -
'Quick and dirty' temperature measurement accuracy test on the SEEK Scan using the SEEK Thermal "Seek Simple Viewer" PC program from the SDK.
The J3-604-200 core appears to be standard in that it can measure well outside of the normal human skin temperature range. This suggests that the core has not been fitted with temperature limited firmware.
I did the good old Coffee Mug test that I use to show the imaging of a hot object and definition of the mugs handle. The distance to target was around 50cm.
Note that the Seek Simple Viewer software is very simple and does not provide Emissivity or Distance to Target settings. It considers the Emissivity to be 1.00 and the distance to Target to be Zero. As the camera is moved away from the temperature reference we witness the path loss that is expected and which results in a lower temperature reading. The camera behaved very well within the constraints of its resolution and internal noise levels. I was impressed with the temperature measurement accuracy at both +5C and +80C.
I used my Galai BB50 professional Thermoelectric Black Body for these tests as it was the quickest to set up.
Fraser
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Measurement accuracy testing against a known accurate Galai BB50 Thermoelectric Black Body.
The BB50 temperature was set to +70.0 Celsius for this initial test.
Test 1 is just a distance image of the BB50 with a distance related measurement error of around 4 Celsius.
Test 2 is a closeup of the BB50 emission plate and part of its aperture surround to provide some contrast
Test 3 is a closeup of the Emission plate with low Delta T, and so low thermal contrast, in the scene so that the camera chooses a narrow temperature span. this setup reveals the noise within the Seek Thermal core.
Measurement accuracy was good at +69.1 Celsius and +69.4 Celsius
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The Galai BB50 temperature was set to +80.0 Celsius and the test repeated
Test 4 is a view of the BB50 emission plate and its aperture surround to provide contrast in the image
Measurement accuracy was good at +79.6 Celsius
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The Galai BB50 temperature was set to +5.0 Celsius and the test repeated
Test 5 is a view of the BB50 emission plate and its aperture surround to provide contrast in the image
Measurement accuracy was excellent at +5.0 Celsius.
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I see frame size as 103x78 but spesc say 206x156
Did you set it low or maybe Seek Simple Viewer is old version and cannot handle device?
Didn't check for new versions but latest available was Aplication 3.0.0.0 with SDK 3.8.0.0
Still limited <9Hz framerate, I was looking for higher framerate Mosaic maybe I can improve Compact Pro limitation of framerate. -
gabiz_ro,
Many thanks for the comment. Yes the Simple Viewer provided only 103x78 pixels. I have yet to find a way to reconfigure the viewer for a larger image. I tried the later Simple Viewer Version 3.8 that is supplied with the evaluation camera kits and it does not show the camera in the camera selector area. I have been playing with the viewer and Seek core drivers but so far, no joy. Running the SDK examples did reveal that the camera reports "Frame" as 103x78 which is odd. I shall have to dig deeper into this.
I tried the excellent Thermo Viewer software by Joe-C and that does not see the camera either.
I ran the SDK 4.3 example programs and the SDL program showed the thermal image. I cut that image from a screen grab and it contained approximately the correct number of pixels so the core is not locked down to 103x78 pixels from what I can see. I attach that screen capture and the output of the example program declaring 103 pixels x 78 associated with the camera ID. The Simple Viewer seems to be constrained in some way to showing only part of the available image coming out of the camerahead. The SDK Example SDL program for testing camera operation shows the whole image, as seen in the attachments. There has to be a configuration setting to change this but I have yet to find it. The newer Simple Viewer appears unwilling to connect to a non evaluation kit camera ?
If I am honest, I have no great love of these Seek Thermal camera cores, so I will limit how much time I spend trying to work out what is going on as I have other, more pressing, tasks to undertake.
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For anyone wondering, the Seek Scan program displays the full resolution of the SEEK Thermal J3-604-200 core as shown in the attached image.
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The Seek Scan Black Body temperature reference is configured to produce an output of 42.0 Celsius which falls within the range that I expected and accuracy appears very good. The green LED blinks during the warm-up period and remains solid on when the correct temperature has been achieved.
Surface uniformity was found to be better than I had expected with the centre and all corners reading 42.0 Celsius +/- 0.1 Celsius. Considering the simple design, I expected lower performance. A professional lab grade temperature reference it may not be, but it is suitable as a quick, highly portable temperature check source for those wishing to ensure that their thermal camera orcIR thermometer is working correctly.
When using the 2021 release of the SEEK Scan software, there is an active & continuous search for the Black Body temperature reference. The software finds it through knowing the set temperature of that reference. If the reference is not found, a warning watermark appears on the visible light image to alert the operator.
Fraser -
I tried the excellent Thermo Viewer software by Joe-C and that does not see the camera either.
I ran the SDK 4.3 example programs and the SDL program showed the thermal image. I cut that image from a screen grab and it contained approximately the correct number of pixels so the core is not locked down to 103x78 pixels from what I can see. I attach that screen capture and the output of the example program declaring 103 pixels x 78 associated with the camera ID.
As it is the top left of the image, I wonder if 'Simpleviewer' is thinking it is attached to the Seek '$99' camera, which is 103x78 ?
Thinking about getting one for more lens fun !
Interesting compare to the FLIR One and looks less aggro mounting it. I spend longer fixing broken USB connectors than using the FLIROne....
Bill
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Bill,
Thank you. I did not know the resolution of the $99 core as I kind of lost interest in SEEK Thermal products a while ago. I still cannot get the latest version of Simple Viewer to run with the camera but I am using Win7 so will try Win10 to see if that is the issue. Hopefully I can convince SEEK camera compatible programs to recognise the SEEK Scan imaging core. Sadly I have very little spare time in the coming week due to family commitments. For what I paid for the SEEK Scan, I am pleased with my purchase, but how I wish SEEK Thermal had used the QVGA core in this unit ! This unit also reminds me of how much better the imagery is that comes out of the Infiray Tiny1C and S0 cores.
Fraser -
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Thanks for all the info. Fraser.
I tried the excellent Thermo Viewer software by Joe-C and that does not see the camera either.
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If I am honest, I have no great love of these Seek Thermal camera cores, so I will limit how much time I spend trying to work out what is going on as I have other, more pressing, tasks to undertake.
What is the USB product ID for that core? If it is different than the "Compact" units that may be why Joe-C's software does not recognize it. Does the Seek app work with it?
If the lens can be removed without damaging something else, I could find it useful for "mod" work, but I guess I'm not hot enough to have one to feel like making an E-bay account just to get one.
Others in the US may be interested to know that the seller is running out of them--I put a $113 one in the cart a bit ago to see if I could buy without an account & it said "last one".
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Seek Scan thermal core details:
Model : J3-604-20x
Resolution : 206 H x 156 V 12um pixels
Lens : 4mm / f1.2
FOV: 35 Degrees H / 26 Degrees V
Sensitivity : <40mK (post processing)
Frame Rate : <9fps
Accuracy : +/- 0.3C between 36C and 40C, when used with Temperature Reference
USB identity to host PC : VID: 289D PID: 0010*
Firmware version : 3.3.1.24
Processor Board Version : 3150
Interface : USB 2.0
*For information, the following USB PID's have been identified by Joe_C on other Seek thermal cameras:
PID 0010 (Compact + XR / Android or iPhone)
PID 0011 (Seek Pro)
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I just connected the camera head, complete with its internal hub and visible light camera, to a Samsung A6 mobile phone. I used a known working Micro USB (M) to USB A (F) OTG adapter cable.
Upon installing the SEEK Thermal App I was rewarded with a thermal image from the camera head. The image was the full 206 x 156 pixels so no cropping. App temperature measurement functionality also worked fine (but the actual measurements need to be checked for accuracy) I took some pictures with my iPad just to show the unit working so they are pretty awful quality !
The camera is identified simply as the “3150” which is the identity of the Processor Board used in this particular core.
The target in these images is the same TV table that I used in previous images.
Fraser
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Hmmm, just looking at those pictures again….. the ones with the delta T temperature mode selected do not look right. The maximum temperature may be correct but +29C on the cabinet as the minimum temperature looks way too high as the room is at +21C.
No time to investigate at the moment. That will have to wait until another day.
Fraser -
Seek Scan thermal core details:
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USB identity to host PC : VID: 289D PID: 0010*
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*For information, the following USB PID's have been identified by Joe_C on other Seek thermal cameras:
PID 0010 (Compact + XR / Android or iPhone)
PID 0011 (Seek Pro)
So it's not that then. I would expect that Joe-C's software would at least recognize that a Seek camera is connected, so perhaps the control commands are different. The ordinary "Compact" I bought in January of 2017 reports:
Camera Hardware
HW: v7 TH: v2 TLID: -1
Camera Software
1.3.0.0
So there may be differences in there. Happy to know the app works with it but it would be great to be able to use "third party" software. -
I will try again with Joe-C’s software. I just selected the SEEK option in the left hand menu plus “connect” but no camera was found. I could have a driver we issue maybe.
Fraser -
Just tested the camera with "Thermo Vision" from Joe_C again. Sadly no dice. The camera is not seen as being connected yet is present in Device manager and working with the SDK.
Temperature accuracy when running on the Samsung A6 was checked and it is accurate. It is confusing that the 3150 core will work with the phone APP, the early Simple Viewer program (although only at 103x78 pixels) but not with the later (SDK3v8) Simple Viewer, Thermo Vision, or SeekOFix. This would need some further investigation but sadly I have little time to 'play' for the next few weeks
So whilst the SEEK Scan may still be good value for money at £120, it is not directly compatible with the 3rd party PC programs and I do not know the cause at this time. Compatibility with Thermo Vision would have been great so that is a bit of a downer
Fraser -
I may be wrong but with "Thermo Vision" from Joe_C I think you need to use other driver (libusb or winusb) installed with zadig
Seek driver for SDK
libusb or winusb via zadig for Thermo Vision -
gabiz-ro
Yes it is WinUSB and I tried that using Zadig.
The SEEK provided driver is WinUSB version 4 and the camera is titled Seek Camera, or something similar, in the Device manager under USB devices.
Using Zadig the WinUSB installed is version 6 and the camera is titled differently in device manager. Something like PIR206i.
This difference was noted by user Ben321 some time ago and he found that he needed the Seek provided driver for Seek SDK programs and the Zadig installed driver for 3rd party programs. Neither driver works for Thermo vision in my case. Of note is that SDK 3.8 fails to work with the SEEK Scan camera yet SDK 4.3 does work. This explains why the later Simple Viewer does not see the camera….. it uses SDK 3.8 in its creation and there is no Simple Viewer built using SDK 4.
Fraser -
Back to the SEEK Scan ... I have just found the Patent application for the SEEK Black body temperature reference and it contains lots of detailed images I attach the PDF from the USPTO here. I have also included the Patent application for the SEEK Scan system.
Fraser
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Thanks Fraser, another very interesting and entertaining read. Appreciate your sharing with us.
david
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dalittle,
It is a pleasure to produce posts that others may find interesting Sadly I am limited in both spare time and funds so cannot buy as many interesting thermal imaging items as I did when in full time employment. I tried to obtain modern camera samples from companies for testing and review but unless you have a YouTube or Instagram presence with a lot of followers it is a waste of time asking. I hope the few posts I still create on thermal imaging related hardware are of interest though 
Fraser -
Fraser, personally I am always excited for another deep dive on something whenever you post. The knowledge you share is incredibly helpful and much appreciated
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@Fraser
You already do much interesting stuff, and already take pictures so making a video during this will be more useful.I understand this is work in plus but something like bigclive is fine.
Some editing on video or even play-pause recording may be enough.
As for followers I thing you'll have a lot in short time. -
I'm working with JoeC trying to get the scan to work with his software. Not much luck so far, I can get the software to recognize the Scan about 50% of the time, but still no imaging.
Steve -
The price of these things has come down to where I found it irresistible. What ultimately made it irresistible, though, was that I could order it from the seller's web site without making yet another account.
https://industryrecycles.com/shop/seek-scan-thermal-body-imager-206-x-156-resolution-yw-aaa-2/
Mine arrived Friday & gave me images "out of the box" on my own software...sort of--everything was either -40 or few hundred degrees F. It took me several hours to ferret out the problems & get reasonable output, but the result is sweet.
The first problem is that the frames of data that the camera spits out upon initialization are apparently only spit out on first init. after power up. If I shut down my program & then re-start without unplugging the camera & re-plugging it, my program just sits there timing out & giving errors.
The major problem for me is that the "frame 9", which I use as a thermistor lookup table, has the same range of values as the Pro dongles rather than what the non-pros have (the ones I have anyway). The new non-pros might now have that same data set too, for all I know. It took me a few hours to figure out how to handle this & still cover the old dongles, but now I have it "close enough" to get reasonable images out of the 'scan :~) I need to do some massaging to get the temperatures closer to correct, but it's working quite well now.
Other observations:
The data from the camera is 206 x 156 pixels but the bottom row is all 0's.
Whenever there is a shutter event the camera outputs frames with status byte 1, 6, & 20. Values in frames 1 & 6 are similar but values in frame 20 are more than twice as big.
Camera Type is reported as 3150 rather than "Compact", also:
Software version: 2.3.0.0
Image Processing Software: 2.11.3.2
Camera Hardware: HW: v0 TH: v5 TLID: -1
Camera Software: 3.8.1.24
I can only guess what caused the problems Fraser had with 3rd party software. One guess is that perhaps the other software is expecting certain return messages from the setup commands & not getting what is expected. I don't process any of those return messages so it won't matter to my software.
I don't have the SDK & don't use "zadig" or "winUSB", so I can't say if there are any issues with those. I use libUSB under Debian Linux & the only problems I had are the ones I stated above.
So the big news is that there are no special codes needed to get the Seek Scan to yield the usual temperature range, OR to get it to work at all--the same USB commands work for the (non-pro) Compacts & the SeekScan. There might be something that needs to be sent to make it work without unplugging the camera every time, but that is not catastrophic for my purposes. Further good news is that this problem does not appear to occur with the Seek phone app. I even force-stopped the app & opened it again & it worked without unplugging the camera.
HOWEVER, there is one disappointing thing with the phone app in that the TIFFs saved from the Scan contain scaled images, only 103x78 pixels, including the temperature data set. The images also are screwed up as shown.
Image in TIFF:
Corrected image:
Image on phone:
I intend to dig into the black body at some point, but for now I feel like I should just be happy with how well this works & do other stuff for a while.
Image from my software
I will attach a set of startup & shutter frames from the 'scan in case they are of help to anyone troubleshooting 3rd party software.
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IwuzBornanerd
Excellent ! Thank you for your work on this. Sadly my SCAN system has sat in its box since I tested it. I shall have to dig it out again and try it with your software Thank you for sharing your experiences with the unit. As you say, they are very inexpensive on the surplus market now People sometimes need a static camera to monitor a scene or equipment and FLIR offer their AX8 for that roll with only a Lepton 2.5 80x60 pixel image. The SEEK SCAN could serve well in that roll if coupled to more general use software than the original app.
Fraser
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I have not [yet?] released my program in C for several reasons; mostly due to hard-coded camera parameters & no documentation, but I have found that the Seek Scan also works with @bostwickenator's code on GitHUb:
https://github.com/OpenThermal/libseek-thermal
With this software it is necessary to unplug the 'scan & re-plug it in each time before the software is started. I have stumbled upon a fix for that in my code, but that fix (a delay) did not work in the OpenThermal code. Without a fix, the camera sits there timing out on the image transfer requests. Increasing the timeout to one second did not help.
Even if I had released my C code, it would not work with the Seek Scan without my latest modifications because the startup frames from the 'scan are different than what my code expected from a non-pro Compact. If someone wants to give it a spin without documentation, let me know... -
I have taken the teardown a bit further & found that the lens is mounted with the same bayonet as the one used on the "Compact" dongles. And the same sort of blocking pin to hold the bayonet in place, but the pin does not restrict the focus; they used glue for that. The lens is also in a threaded barrel so the Seek Scan lens is indeed adjustable focus...once the glue is dug off the lens mount. And that was not very difficult. The threads appear to be the same half-millimeter pitch as on the Compacts, but the barrel diameter is only 10mm compared to the 12mm diameter in the Compact XR. And the 10mm diameter is slightly larger than the barrel on the non-XR, non-pro Compact.
This photo shows the separated lens & bayonet along with a 12mm diameter webcam lens for comparison.
My Seek Scan is now an XR as I have mounted the lens from the XR I originally bought in 2015. I also put a lower-light, higher resolution visible camera in it (the pwb is the same size!) & intend to use the pair for back yard surveillance.
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Fraser mentioned that the temperature sensor on the black body would not be noticeable by the thermal camera at a 5 foot distance This made me curious as to whether it would be noticeable close-up and it does show up when focused at a distance of 2 inches, even with a regular noisy ol' Seek Compact. :~)
This image is from a tiff file written by the Seek apk on my phone: