OEM Seek cores on the horizon?

[nsd_c]

Hi all,

I was just browsing Seek's website today and noticed a section that I believe is fairly new, and that I have not seen anyone mention here on the forums--though perhaps this is old news and I was just not aware?

Anyway, tucked under the "Products" section is a new "OEM" page: https://www.thermal.com/oem.html

This currently has no public information and just a form asking for info (incl. estimated volume and annual revenue ).

Fingers crossed that this means that some day there might be Seek thermal cores available as readily as FLIR ones (i.e., from the likes of Digi-Key et al.), but somehow I don't know if this'll ever happen...

(Was this known to anyone else prior btw...?)

[Vipitis]

I think the real win here would be documentation as well as some official SDK to allow running a Seek on Windows. The core price could also go really low, purely judging on what some of the cameras with flir sensors cost. 

[Hyper_Spectral]

Mostly interested in who makes the cores, highly doubt this company just started up and began producing thermal cores. I'd love to be wrong, though

[Ultrapurple]

Mostly interested in who makes the cores, highly doubt this company just started up and began producing thermal cores. I'd love to be wrong, though

You may want to read this post and the one after it to learn a little about Seek's origins.

[Hyper_Spectral]

Thank you for providing me a link to this thread instead of complaining about my lack of knowledge of that specific company.

I emailed them to see if they'll ever produce high res cores  asking just about everyone I can in hopes of upping the demand and competition

[Ultrapurple]

Thank you for your courtesy.

It will indeed be interesting to see what Seek comes up with in the future. I wasn't impressed with the performance of original low-res dongle but they've upped their game considerably since then. Whether we'll see sugar-cube-size HD-class OEM modules soon is anyone's guess, but I imagine they're working on their next generation of sensors right now.

(Yes, I know, there is a minimum pixel size limit, probably about 1 wavelength (10µm), meaning a minimum sensor width of 1920 x 0.01mm = 19.2mm, plus packaging, so a sugar cube is optimistic - at least until someone works out how to make functional pixels significantly less than a wavelength wide).

[Hyper_Spectral]

Thank you for your courtesy.

It will indeed be interesting to see what Seek comes up with in the future. I wasn't impressed with the performance of original low-res dongle but they've upped their game considerably since then. Whether we'll see sugar-cube-size HD-class OEM modules soon is anyone's guess, but I imagine they're working on their next generation of sensors right now.

(Yes, I know, there is a minimum pixel size limit, probably about 1 wavelength (10µm), meaning a minimum sensor width of 1920 x 0.01mm = 19.2mm, plus packaging, so a sugar cube is optimistic - at least until someone works out how to make functional pixels significantly less than a wavelength wide).

Hmm, I don't think we'll have sugar cube sized modules for at least 5-10 years. Pretty sure the inverse square law is working against us in that regard. Considering the core needs to maintain very high sensitivity within certain thermal constraints, we'll be battling heat on one side and pixel sensitivity (and in turn resolution) on the other side. Essentially, cancelling each others improvements out.

A new technology may solve this, but new tech takes what, a decade, to proliferate?

Further backing this up, in my opinion, is the fact that the top military complexes don't seem to have found a new core technology that's worth documenting for the public to improve upon. We generally see limited press releases about the unstable technology a few years prior to it becoming stable enough for actual use. Do I think there are NATO countries with the new tech? Absolutely, but I'm willing to bet it's brand new to them and without it making economic sense they're going to put it on the back burner. They're already using high res high fidelity cores, they're just cooled. I think a good thing to look out for is when the military complex really starts pushing the use of sUAS <100lb. With the recent acquisition of Aeryon Labs by FLIR, one would think it's on their radar.

http://investors.flir.com/news-releases/news-release-details/flir-systems-acquires-aeryon-labs-200m

[Ben321]

I've already contacted them using their online order form to ask about these. I'll see if I get any reply. I'm a bit worried, since the fields in the order form seem to indicate they are looking exclusively to sell these cores to literal OEMs, not hobbyists. They have a field for example where I can put my company name, and there is an asterisk by it, meaning it is mandatory to fill it in (meaning they only want people who are actual manufacturers, who will use this core in a product, to contact them about it). I simply put "none" in that field (and similarly bypassed other mandatory fields that ask about details about my company). I'm concerned I may get no reply from them. If I do get a reply though, I'll post back here and let you know.

[Spirit532]

The HTI Chinese cameras use these OEM Seek cores, and they operate via USB(internally!). They don't have the bezel and don't explicitly say they do, but everything from the resolution, to noise, to on-module CPU and optics are almost 100% identical.

[Bill W]

The Scott V320 is also SEEK core

https://www.3mscott.com/products/3m-scott-v320-thermal-imager/

(note it is a geo-snoop website, use a private window and pretend to be in the US)

Bill