It may be that the thermal image sensor is significantly more expensive to produce than a visible light sensor, but I can assure you that thermal image sensors are not 100x as expensive to manufacture as visible light sensors. Same thing with the lenses.
By my estimate, the price to buy for a thermal camera of a given resolution is about 100x what a visible light CMOS camera of the same resolution costs. Is the cost of the manufacturing process for a thermal cam actually 100x what it costs to make a visible light CMOS camera of the same resolution? Or are the companies selling thermal cams just making more obscene profits than the companies selling visible light CMOS cameras?
Same answer as every time you ask this question...... yes that is where the cost is at.
Typical phone level sensor is 1.5 um pixels
Thermal camera 12um pixels
80x less sensors per per wafer for the same pixel size
Then add in the complications of fab for bolometers (3D structure)
Then add in the poor yield for bolometers (because of the 3D structure)
Then add in the vacuum packaging needed for TIC
Then add in the lens and flag costs
Then add in the calibrations needed for TIC
Then add in the higher support electronics needed vs a one chip CMOS
Finally you have the lower production to recover design costs in hardware and software.
It may be that the thermal image sensor is significantly more expensive to produce than a visible light sensor, but I can assure you that thermal image sensors are not 100x as expensive to manufacture as visible light sensors. Same thing with the lenses.
My suspicion is that while the they are more expensive to produce (and this should naturally increase the cost somewhat), the reason that they are being sold as expensively as they are right now also is due to price gouging (charging so much more than it costs to manufacture, to the point that the company is basically robbing its customers).
I'm guessing that the actual manufacturing costs for a 640x480 thermal imager core, are probably actually somewhere between $500 and $1000. Possibly even less than $500.
Which core / sensor manufacturing facilities have you visited and performed open book costing on ?
As for manufacturing costs, $1500 is probably close as that implies a typical profit margin of 50% on $3000 one-off sale price. In 1000+ off you might get down to $2000 a core.
That added $1500 (or $500) has to cover sales, marketing, shipping, returns, support, equipment amortisation, R&D amortisation, corporate admin and finally hope to leave a little bit of profit (whether for shareholders or for the Chinese Communist Party)
What do you need such high resolution in a thermal image for? High resolution is useful for visible light cameras, but a thermal camera is an entirely different beast.
It may be that the thermal image sensor is significantly more expensive to produce than a visible light sensor, but I can assure you that thermal image sensors are not 100x as expensive to manufacture as visible light sensors. Same thing with the lenses.
If you can assure us, then please, by all means, provide evidence to back up your assurance.
And you do know that a camera is more than just the image sensor, right?
I see this as another example of the problem with corporate greed. And it makes me wish that there was some company out there who would make the mission to provide cheap alternatives to expensive products like this, so that the average person could get their hands on some really cool tech, that would otherwise be unavoidable to the average person if they were to buy it from any other company.
Marketing is very expensive. Yes. But I'm guessing when you take into account the number of cams sold, and divide the price for overall marketing by the number of cameras, the "per camera marketing" isn't anywhere near as expensive as the camera itself.
Like is there some kind of international agreement between all thermal camera companies in the world (even in China), to not charge less than about $3000 for a 640x480 thermal camera?
I see this as another example of the problem with corporate greed. And it makes me wish that there was some company out there who would make the mission to provide cheap alternatives to expensive products like this, so that the average person could get their hands on some really cool tech, that would otherwise be unavoidable to the average person if they were to buy it from any other company.
There is, it is called SEEK.
For historical reasons they would be delighted to wipe out FLIR and the Chinese of they could. The owners do not need excess profits. No way would they be in collusion.
That they cannot is the biggest indicator that your presumptions are all
To get cool pics in a size that the average person could appreciate, after I post said images online (think posting cool pics to social media). Most people aren't going to want to need to get their face close to the screen to see detail in an image. They want to sit at comfortable distance to view the pics. I'd say that 640x480 is about the smallest size of picture that would be considered reasonable size to the average person. If I got some pics I considered awesome (awesome because they were thermal pics, and not normal pics like most people have) around my neighborhood, and wanted to share them on the socials, I think that most people would laugh if I posted something with 320x240 resolution, because that's so low res. Not exactly a social media worthy resolution at 320x240. Now at 640x480 that's different. I would probably get quite a few more views of my pics if I posted them in that resolution. Yes I can upscale them to 640x480, but that's fake and doesn't actually bring out any extra detail in the image, and in fact too much upscaling can make the picture look blurry.
What is the situation with thermal imaging equipment and ukraine?
I am generally against wars but realize that much of what rankles me may not technically be illegal or benefit from regulatory attention. Suppose I did want to report "illegal" activity if I saw it, what would/should I report and to whom?
But none of those applications really need exceptionally high resolution. 320x240 is high resolution in terms of thermal images.
Did anyone add to the price conspiracy that we might be getting only the low end of binned devices rejected from military use?
I would think most surveillance applications would benefit from higher resolution than 320x200, actually even higher than VGA would be ideal but of course 320x200 is a valid starting point but if (like NIR/VIS sensors) the incremental cost for VGA, HD, FHD, UHD could end up to be small enough then I'm 100% sure a lot of the mass surveillance market would select the higher resolution chips.
You seem to think that I am talking about integrating it into a phone. I am talking about using it as a USB dongle on the phone (like the FLIR One, and Seek Compact Pro).
I think OP doesn't quite grok the thermal market and inherently exponentially more expensive tech than standard CMOS vis band imaging.