EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Products => Thermal Imaging => Topic started by: Fraser on February 09, 2020, 01:37:25 pm
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Dear All,
I am going to be experimenting with some Germanium lenses for my thermal cameras. I used to use a free online program based optical test bench to simulate the beam behaviour of a lens, or multiple lens set. That software has disappeared :( Does anyone have recommendations for a simple free optical test bench simulator that I can use in my hobby experiments please ?
I have googled for recommendations but many such simulators are either very expensive or overly complex for hobbyist use. Personal experience is often helpful in finding a nice, well designed hobby level program :)
I am used to such programs not containing support for Germanium lens elements with their high refractive index and compensate for that in my plots.
Thanks in advance
Fraser
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not sure if this one is too simplistic for you, but I like it because it's fast, simple, and free
https://ricktu288.github.io/ray-optics/
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There is also opticalraytracer:
https://arachnoid.com/OpticalRayTracer/ (https://arachnoid.com/OpticalRayTracer/)
It is java based & cross platform. I have used this under Linux, but not a whole lot. It is rather simple to use.
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Thank you for the recommendations chaps. Much appreciated :-+
I will have a play with them :)
Fraser
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IwuzBornanerd,
The recommendation you have provided is the program that I used to use. I thought it was gone as my link to it stopped working and my searches failed to find it. That was a few years ago and I see a comment that it was completely re-written in 2017 so maybe that is why I lost track of it. Thank you for finding it for me again :)
Fraser
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There's a french program there : http://jeanmarie.biansan.free.fr/optgeo.html (http://jeanmarie.biansan.free.fr/optgeo.html)
You can switch it to english but the GUI itself remain weird.
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Bap2703,
Thanks :-+ I will take a look at it :)
Fraser