What do you use thermal imaging equipment for ?

[CatalinaWOW]

For many years I was heavily involved in infrared equipment design and use.  Became much less actively involved in the technical side of that about twenty years ago.  Now I am a casual hobby user who dabbles in both images and measurements.  It is not currently at the center of my hobby activities.

[Psi]

One other thing I used my thermal camera for the other day.
I never would have noticed it if I had not used the thermal camera to check over the PCB out of curiosity.

I found a lone resistor on my the PCB that was getting warm when it shouldn't have been.
This led me to discover a firmware bug where I had forgot to idle state the outputs going to the 2 transistors driving the piezo beeper, so the timer kept them in opposition even when the beeper was not running and the transistor on one side was always held on drawing power in the pullup.

[KD0CAC John]

I use for construction heating / cooling , electronics repair , automotive diagnostics and because I heard from others - looking for roof leaks water & snow melt .
Between older , & not able to work past trades , using Flir E4 for helping others diagnose as many issues as can get paid for , social security is not enough .
And then there is my TOOL JONES , love of tools addiction

[thermalengineer]

Thermal would be great for locating where my house leaks heat (winter is coming), and looking for overheated electric fuses connections. And the most fun, looking for wild animals in darkness. I have several InfiRay gadgets for different applications. Those literally help me a lot in my daily life!

[dalittle]

I have a couple of old ISGs sitting around gathering dust. Occasionally after several pints with friends on my deck overlooking the backyard, I will wow guests with what you can see at night.  And I have also been known to engage in what’s known in the industry as “stupid flir tricks.” 

I once observed my annual termite inspector having a look at my walls with a low rez FLIR camera. Looking over a low delta scene for tiny temperature deltas with the camera set on the most obnoxious rainbow-looking color palette that acted more like a filter to mask any possible useful information.  I asked him - what the hell are you looking at with that thing?  He said – looking for termites!  He then proceeded to tell me all kinds of fascinating things about thermal imaging – mostly wrong.  I asked him if he could see through all that color – of which he said yes absolutely. Well, ok then. 

I never did tell him we used to manufacture those things.

[Bill W]

I do not think I would have resisted getting my own camera out and looking as well, with a 'try a proper camera' thrown in    especially if there was anything there (not that i wish you any termites)

I let my local gas fitter borrow one when he needs one, things like leaking underfloor heating is a big problem for them.  Will be useful again next week as I'm getting some radiators changed so will need to check the bleeding and flows.


regards
Bill

[Fraser]

The termite story reminds me of the review I did on the DYT CA-10 PCB thermal analysis camera some time ago.
I love all wildlife, including insects so decided to include some in my review ! The CA-10 is sub QVGA but the images of insects still proved interesting to me. I should try the same tests with a better resolution camera.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/review-dianyang-technology-ca10-circuit-board-thermal-analyzer-repair-rd/75/

At the end of the day, a thermal camera is just a clever tool that must be used correctly to get the best from it…. Like all tools. Some owners are novices learning about the technology, whilst others choose their camera for pretty pictures or maybe some hard core thermography. Sadly I have witnessed some users employing a thermal camera just to impress the client and justify the high cost of the job Such a tool can be very impressive in the hands of a charlatan! The situation is not helped by Hollywood showing a FLIR Ex5 being used to look through steel doors at people within a room beyond ! (Hobbs & Shaw)

With regard to colour palettes, I was trained to use monochrome thermography but I do like the hot Iron palette. Some people swear by the rainbow high contrast palette but I find it too garish for my tastes. I trained on the cooled AGEMA THV880 and military thermal imagers that provided their best imagery in the monochrome (black and white) palette. When I think back to the thermal imaging technology I cut my teeth on I see how far this technology has come in the years since. I used to be happy with 128 x 128 cooled pixels or a raster display produced by the Magnavox military version of the AGEMA 210 single axis scanning camera. I bought an AGEMA THV510 to reminisce about the ‘good old days’ of early portable thermal imaging…… the THV510 is a single axis scanning thermal imager but produces far better imagery than I remember coming from the older AGEMA 210. I even used an AGA 110 (AGA became AGEMA) and that was quite an experience in low resolution thermography 

Fraser

[Fraser]

The AGA 110, AGEMA THV880, AGEMA 210 and the AGEMA THV510 cameras that I used to use in my early days of thermographic analysis. I wish people who complain about the low resolution and cost of thermal imaging equipment could have a play with these very expensive pieces of thermal imaging history. They do not know how fortunate they are these days !

For anyone interested in the single axis scanning camera technology (a single scanning mirror plus linear thermal detector array) I did a teardown and commentary here….

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/agema-thermovision-510-a-look-under-her-clothes-by-fraser/

[Liam G]

I don't know if it's too late to add options to the poll, but if not, I think any future polls should include an option for people who have little-or-no interest in electronics, and are mainly into the home-insulation side of things. This option would best describe me, and I'm sure I'm not alone here, as this seems to be the only active thermal-cam community on the whole internet at the moment. Before arriving here I tried r/Thermal on Reddit which was dead as a dodo.

[Fraser]

We are indeed fortunate that Dave L Jones responded so positively to a request to create a thermal imaging area to his forum. It has long been a place for like minded people and even thermal camera manufacturers/designers to ‘meet’. I know of no other thermal imaging related forum of this quality on the internet. It is the members of the forum that make it such a useful place to meet though. We are indeed fortunate to have input from some very knowledgeable people here 

I take your comment on board regarding the user profile for thermal imaging. It used to be very much the preserve of engineers, scientists and the military. With the increase in availability of the technology and significant decrease in the cost of ownership, the technology has become far more widespread in our daily lives. This thread is relatively old and reflects a period when thermal imaging was still a little bit specialist and unusual. The pandemic has brought thermal imaging technology into the public spotlight and lead to the release of some very interesting consumer grade (and priced) cameras from China 

I think your usage case is covered in the poll by:

“Hobbyist - Casual user interested in both Measurement and good images”

If carrying out professional thermal surveys of buildings, the poll covers that in the first “Professional” heading :

“Professional Applications only (Industrial, Trade, Science, Surveys etc)”

Fraser

[SilverSolder]

There's an interesting possible automotive application:  finding phantom power leaks...   Sometimes, one of the many subsystems in a car can fail in a way where they don't shut down, or only partially shut down, which eventually results in the battery draining so it cannot be started when the user returns after an extended period of time.  It can be very tedious and time consuming to trace these kinds of faults with traditional meters.

Looking for "glowing" fuses in fuse panels that carry larger currents with a thermal camera is well known, but this application would require the camera to be able to "see" extremely small differences in heat (e.g. a fuse panel where one of the fuses has a current of say, 30mA)....

Not sure that is even theoretically possible? - if so, what type of camera would be best?

[fourfathom]

I have a FLIR attachment for my Android phone, and I use it for electronics and around the home.  At home we have in-floor hot-water heating and occasionally a valve goes bad.  The FLIR lets me easily see which sector is cold, and the temperature of the various under-house water pipes and valves.  Much easier to fix stuff when you can isolate the problem.  This is how I convinced my wife that we needed the camera (but she knew why I really wanted it.)

For electronics I use the FLIR to look at the temperature of components.  The image here shows a 1.5W class-E power amplifier, running at 10 MHz.  Everything felt fairly cool to the touch, but I could see that a ferrite choke was heating up by about 10 degrees C.  The two power-FETS (2N7002, SOT-23 package) were running much cooler.  The FLIR is combining the IR image with the phone camera image, and because I was quite close to the board the parallax shows up.  I can turn off the image combining, and when the camera is further from the target the alignment is good.

I also used the FLIR to see how uneven the heat was on an electric skillet I used for reflow, and when evaluating a toaster-oven for reflow use.

[thermalengineer]

Mix of Professional Applications and Hobby use

[Alinas]

Well for me I would say thermal imaging equipment was supposed to be used in science and medical.. But nowadays with the development of technology we consumers can also use these equipments to dectct home, building, or outdoor exploring and hunting also!

[coppercone2]

I like finding power resistors that are running fine and having it lead me on wild goose chases with PCB repairs.

[SharpBananas]

Excluding diagnosing dT*/dt on certain 3d print sections, pretty much nothing.... I just really wanted one since I was a kid.
Its totally a toy for me.

[bostwickenator]

Mainly for diagnostics on motors and electrical systems. Sometimes insulation.