Any experience with this thermal camera for pcb repairing?

[Chriss]

Hi!
Im on the way to buy a cheap thermal camera for electronic repairing. Most of time to identify some hot or in short circuit or components on the pcb.

Does somebody has any experience with this model for the job I wish to do?

The model is the  UNI-T UTI165A.
Is it worth to have on the bench for such of tasks?

[shakalnokturn]

I'm sure a quick search in https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/ will fetch plenty of answers.

I don't know about UTI165A, I have both Seek thermal for Android and CAT S60 smartphone. Resolution is good enough to be useful even for 0805 SMD, a thermal camera is a great tool for electronics. The Seek has a very noisy picture and no visible image overlay but it has a manually adjustable focal length which is good when pinpointing. The S60 has image overlay but that's pointless at the distance it's used at for electronics troubleshooting.

My main concerns with UTI165A would be focal distance vs. resolution and UNI-T build quality.

[Chriss]

Hmmmm...
So much info but I feel like and idiot... :-)

Some people saying I need a higher resolution to  recognize small parts on the pcb.
Other say I need a manual focus, closer distance to the pcb...

As I saw the minimum distance is 25cm in the writings for this camer I mentioned in my first post.
It has a resolution 160x120px.
Is this not good enough to repair some basic electronics devices like car radio, car ecu's, sometime pcb from washing machine etc. ?

Here is another product but still from UNI-T, the
UNI-T UTI120 MOBILE.
It has a resolution 120x90 and half the price of the mentioned device.

I'm now really confused.

In my area it is hard to find any other thermal camera to buy and I'm really restricted...

[Greybeard]

Make some photos of the devices you want to repair.
Scale down to the resolution of the thermal cam (160x120 or 120x90).
If you still can locate/identify the parts you are interested in, the resolution is enough.

[Chriss]

Wow! Perfect suggestions.
Thanks! :-)

Update:

So, I took a picture with my mobile phone of an old pcb with TH parts on it.
The distance from the img was around 25cm.
Then I rescaled the img to 160x120px.
It is unusable at a zoom of 100%.

What the hack I'm missing?
Maybe I should first crop the image to the screen resolution of the thermal camera display and then make the resizing to the IR resolution of the thermal camera?
If I rescale an img which is in original 1800x4000px to 160x120px it is totally unusable.

But if I check on the net reviews from peoples with thermal cam, many of them are working with som IR resolution of 80x60px or so...

What am I miss?

[Chriss]

I made a new resampling where I first cropped the image to the resolution of the screen of the unit, which is 320x240px.
Then I resized the picture to 160x120px.
If this is a correct way, than I can say this camera is really usable.

I have to say the original image is 1800x4000px.
After cropping and rescaling I can clearly identify the smallest smd components.


Check the pic.

[Skashkash]

On these fixed focus devices.
Also know that if you are willing to do a little work you can add an external lens to change the focal distance.

I did this on my older flir unit to do pcb inspection.

A relatively cheap ZnSe lens designed for a co2 laser cutter worked well for me.
I just needed to fabricate a simple holder for the lens.

[Chriss]

I already talked to a technicians from the company who can sell me this device.
After I mentioned for what type of work I wish to use it, he offered me he will try
the camera exact in as I mentioned and will send pictures and give me a decision does
this camera is usable or not for pcb inspection with smd parts, without any special
data extraction and data manipulation.

I think that is a great offer and I will wait to see the result. :-)

[Audiorepair]

I use a cheap FLIR with very limited resolution, but find you can find the tiny components simply by covering the hotspot with a finger, stick or sharpie etc.
Fingers are good as they show up well enough on the screen as you home in.

You don't really need high resolution to do that.

[Chriss]

Thanks for this nice explanation and help.
As I reading now and try to figure out what is what and how is it doing the job, I come also to a  mindset does it is not just simple as it looks like to detect the correct way any faulty parts.

The operator of the thermal camera must have a kind of practice to much data as possible from the image.

If the operator is well trained then a cheap camera can also come handy, other way even the most expensive camera will "fail".

What is your camera model?

All these IR resolution are for me really low, compared to a screen ot photo camera res.

If a 80x60px IR res camera is a low res one, is a 160x120px IR res camera a midrange or also a low range one?

What you mean by a high res camera?

[wraper]

I don't have it but it will not be good because of fixed focus and minimum distance of 25cm. With PCB inspection it's more important that camera can be put close to PCB while staying in focus rather than high performance/resolution.

[Audiorepair]

My FLIR is the TG165 which is discontinued, now they sell the TG165X.

TG165:   IR res 80 x 60, 9 Hz,    LCD res 176 x 220
TG165X: IR res 80 x 60, 8.7 Hz, LCD res 320 x 240

The TG165 works well enough for me so far (using the finger method when desired).
If I really needed a better one I would buy one.

[Mario87]

For around the same price you can get the UTi-260B which has a 256x192 resolution, I have the UTi-690B from BangGood which is just a re-badged 260B that was only sold via BangGood, seems they have stopped selling it now and sell the normal 260B instead (link below).

Use it from afar to identify a hot spot on the board, then use ZnSe macro lens to bring the focal distance down to around 60mm and pinpoint the exact component I want to see. Works great and if you have a 3D printer I recommend printing this cover with macro lens holder made by one of our members here...

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5269694

https://uk.banggood.com/UNI-T-UTi260B-256+192-Pixel-Infrared-Thermal-Imager-20~550C-Industrial-Thermal-Imaging-Camera-Handheld-USB-Infrared-Thermometer-p-1978980.html?rmmds=stop_sale_viewalsoview&cur_warehouse=CN&trace_id=c9771674742127466

[wraper]

Use it from afar to identify a hot spot on the board, then use ZnSe macro lens to bring the focal distance down to around 60mm and pinpoint the exact component I want to see. Works great and if you have a 3D printer I recommend printing this cover with macro lens holder made by one of our members here...

That works, however if you're after a new camera, it's better to just buy a camera with adjustable focus rather than buy unsuitable one and make contraptions to make it useable.

[Hamelec]

Use it from afar to identify a hot spot on the board, then use ZnSe macro lens to bring the focal distance down to around 60mm and pinpoint the exact component I want to see. Works great and if you have a 3D printer I recommend printing this cover with macro lens holder made by one of our members here...

That works, however if you're after a new camera, it's better to just buy a camera with adjustable focus rather than buy unsuitable one and make contraptions to make it useable.

could you recommend one below 400€?

[Audiorepair]

I doubt that.

However you can use a cheap camera from afar and then use a q-tip or whatever to mask/ pinpoint the exact component you want to identify.

[wraper]

Use it from afar to identify a hot spot on the board, then use ZnSe macro lens to bring the focal distance down to around 60mm and pinpoint the exact component I want to see. Works great and if you have a 3D printer I recommend printing this cover with macro lens holder made by one of our members here...

That works, however if you're after a new camera, it's better to just buy a camera with adjustable focus rather than buy unsuitable one and make contraptions to make it useable.

could you recommend one below 400€?

On inexpensive end it's more common on Smartphone/PC attachments. For example Infiray T2S Plus is well within your budget and has 256*192 resolution and 25Hz frame rate as a bonus. I think some Seek Thermal had that too but you get much worse performance. Also AFAIK some of fixed focus USB cameras work well enough at close distance too.

[eloso]

See below for image of a small PCB taken with my Seek USB camera.   You can manually focus very close and if I really wanted to I could have got in closer to see the individual 0805 components. As it is, if any of them was getting hot it would be obvious.  The large hot component is a DMT6002-LTS MOSFET that was getting a bit hot under the collar but within spec.

I've had my Seek for quite a while and can't remember the price but it should be less than 400 euro.

Its been a nice toy as well as a useful tool.


Cheers


Eloso

[Hamelec]

looks not so bad, but I don't like these smartphone plugins. Always worried about ruining the USB ports or that it won't work after the next android/ios update.

[wraper]

You can buy a very cheap smartphone just for camera and it still will be below EUR400.

[Mario87]

That works, however if you're after a new camera, it's better to just buy a camera with adjustable focus rather than buy unsuitable one and make contraptions to make it useable.

Yes, in an ideal world, but cameras with adjustable focus are considerably more expensive than what I linked to at £275 / €300 with the same specs.

could you recommend one below 400€?

TBH it's quite widely accepted that the UNi-T 260B / 690B are the best bang for buck in the price range you refer to. The one I linked to is around €300, then add maybe €25-€30 for your ZnSe lens + 3D printed holder. Check the thread in the thermal camera section of this forum related to the 260B, lots of info on it there.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/uni-t-uti260b/