A quick&dirty hack yields a old-school analog video thermal imaging camera

[globoy]

This might be amusing to some of you other old-timers :-)

I recently stumbled across an ESP32 library (https://github.com/aquaticus/esp32_composite_video_lib) that uses the built-in DAC and I2S peripheral to create a PAL or NTSC (or SECAM) analog video output (monochrome only).  I thought that was pretty cool and it inspired me to make a mash-up of it with my own thermal imaging camera firmware to create an analog output camera.  I think the output looks a lot like some of the photos Fraser posts from older camera.

The first pic below is a home-built version of the camera imaging some black-body radiators.

The hardware is my own tCam-Mini design or you can build your own if you have an ESP32 with WROVER module and a Lepton breakout board.  It works with all 160x120 pixel Lepton 3.X modules (including the new 90° 3.1R).  It can display a spotmeter temp (with old-school 7-segment temp reading) and minimum/maximum point markers and has a whole two palettes (white-hot, black-hot). You can even set the emissivity and temperature units (C or F).  The doc and firmware is at https://github.com/danjulio/tCamMiniAnalog in case anyone cares to take a look.

I'll probably make a version for the Infiray Tiny1-C core as well at some point.  I think I should be able to get 18-20 FPS from that little beastie.