Will the 160x120 Lepton ever be sold?

[Ben321]

I mean will it ever be sold as a standalone component? Or will it always be kept proprietary for FLIR's own use in their own devices (such as the FLIR One), while only selling to the public the older 80x60 Lepton (in order to make sure that their company has a distinct advantage over all competition)?

[Fraser]

Ben,

You ask a question that only FLIR can answer.

Logically FLIR will wish to get as great a return on the LEPTON cores as is possible. There are development costs to recover first.

FLIR are having difficulty meeting the customer demand for the FLIR ONE Gen 2 camera and this could be for any number of reasons, but one could be core production capacity. If they cannot meet their own production needs it is unlikely that they would sell precious LEPTON 3 core stock to third parties at this time. 

There is no significant reason why FLIR would withhold the LEPTON 3 from OEM's once they have the production capacity to meet the markets needs. As to selling to the general public..... well that may or may not happen. It is a sad fact that selling directly to the public can be a royal pain in the derriere. The overheads for taking orders are high and the support team get inundated with questions from people who quite frankly do not know what they are doing. This is a generalism I know but I was friends with DATONG UK and heard their horror stories about dealing with the general public. FLIR can sell through the likes of Mouser and Digikey, but they are still exposed the the disproportionately high level of questions coming into the support team when compared to selling professional cameras or built 'turn key' consumer cameras. 

Will FLIR make the LEPTON 3 be deployed in 3rd party OEM devices ? almost certainly. Will they sell it to the public direct or via Agents ? .... Hmm that depends upon their experience with sales of the LEPTON 2.

Before I get flamed for tarring all general public purchasers with the same brush.... I know that many buyers will know what they are doing, but there will be an equal or greater number who do not, and who need 'hand holding'.

Fraser