Flir One Edge Pro 160x120 wireless mobile phone thermal camera (German)

[CyberCartel]

There is an announcement of the new Flir camera: https://www.notebookcheck.com/FLIR-enthuellt-die-One-Edge-Pro-als-komplett-drahtlose-Waermebild-Kamera-fuer-Smartphones.667778.0.html

[Fraser]

The problem with these products is that the 160 x 120 pixel LEPTON core that resides within them is getting pretty old now. FLIR need to develop the LEPTON line and release a core that can compete well against the fresh offerings coming out of China. Guide Sensmart and Infiray have strong products with which FLIR Lepton based products will have a hard time competing in the current market.

I personally would not buy another Lepton based product from FLIR after seeing the poor reliability of their FLIR One G2 and G3 dongle cameras. The Lepton based DUO drone camera is similarly troubled by poor build quality control.

Fraser

[ArsenioDev]

I talked with the Teledyne FLIR people at AUSA last month, they are indeed feeling the pressure from Iray and their offerings, but would not confirm any lepton sequels or what's next aside from they are working on stuff.

[Vipitis]

If it uses the same lens that's focussed at 90cm hyperfocal distance, it's best to useless. Especially if the idea is to get this camera into hard to reach places and close to subjects. another bit issue I have with all FLIR One products is that FLIR uses blurry upscaling. Which you can't turn off. If you have a working third party app you can, but in the default app you don't. It creates blurry interpolation between actual data points which just make the image worse. If you open the color palette selection screen in the MyFLIR app, you can see the actual true resolution... And the image is so much more useful.

I do believe that a laptop 160 at 30hz would be a bit more competitive. There is precedent in US court ruling to change arms regulations if international competition has an technological advantage over you. Which could be a way for Teledyne to sue against. But only if they want to continue the consumer market. Which they apparently do with this new product. 30Hz leptons exists in the military micro UAV and one of the TPL gun sights.

[Fraser]

A quick win for FLIR and its LEPTON core would be relocation of the FFC shutter behind the lens and the use of a decent Chalcogenide IR Glass lens in place of the clever, but less than ideal, Silicon lens design. The ability to easily manual focus the lens, even if a tool was required, would also be an  improvement. With 160 x 120 12um pixels you really need to give the microbolometer the very best chance to produce a decent image. Hikvision manage to do it with their 160 x 120 pixel camera cores. As to the upscaling that FLIR employ, there really is no excuse for poor technique in that area of the design as upscaling so well understood these days. FLIR really do need to step up to the plate and refresh their LEPTON core design and associated software. I know their ‘baby’ is the BOSON but, as some of us know, that project is troubled, to say the least. At the current rate of progress in microbolometer core designs coming out of China, FLIR could find their products severely ‘out-gunned’ in the consumer marketplace. Creating ‘gadgets’ based on the LEPTON cannot compete with better imaging performance in the long run. From the consumer stand point, we are fortunate to be seeing these new cores coming out of China. We have more choice and competitive pricing. We may see an increase in the resolution offered from more budget priced cores in the years ahead but, for the moment 256 x 192 pixels appears to be a ‘sweet spot’ that the Chinese designers are focussed on.
I will shortly be releasing my review of the Infiray P2 PRO that contains the Infiray Tiny1 core that  competes with the LEPTON. It offers higher resolution and higher frame rate…. It is not perfect however, as we shall see. Would I choose it over a Lepton 3.5 ? …. Wait to read the P2 Pro review to find out 

Fraser