Thermal Expert android app experiences

[bugi]

Since I couldn't find this info easily (or at all) from the interwebs, I thought to add my experiences so far, using TE-Q1.

Galaxy S5: worked as expected, slightly slow.
Tab S: works as expected, slightly slow.
Tab S3: works as expected.  Suggests to insert a card storage (microSD), yet there is one already in.
Note 9 (Exynos, on latest non-Pie firmware): earlier it didn't give any view (just the flat gray background shown), but after restart of the phone and first testing on Tab S3, it now works as expected.  Suggests to insert a card storage (microSD), yet there is one already in.

(Added 4 days later:)
LG G7 ThinQ (Snapdragon 845, same as on e.g. US note 9's): Worked on first try, but gave periodic slowdowns, i.e. waving hand suddenly seemed to slow down and lag more, then soon speed back up.   Edit: showed later the same symptoms as Note 9 at first; no "loading" text at start, no view from camera shown. Closing the app in the running app list and restarting helped.


I have not tried to record things on all of those yet, I just checked that the OTG + app + camera at least show a changing image and calibration (i.e. lens cap closed -stuff) can be executed. The issue with Note 9 at first got me into trying these devices in general.

Feel free to reply with other experiences.

[polar]

I can add my experiences with the TE-Q1 (USB-C variant) too:

Galaxy Alpha: worked as expected, but noticeably slower than on the other ones
Galaxy S9: If camera is detected it works very well, but most of the time I connect the camera it is not detected. Not sure why, all other stuff I connect to the phone gets detected all the time. Camera on other hardware (alpha, tablet, PC) always works.
Samsung Tab A (SM-580): works very well


also there is a list on the thermal expert website (https://www.thermalexpert.eu/english-1/support/)


■ Good Compatiblity Device For T.E - Q1

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge
Samsung Galaxy S6
Samsung Galaxy Alpha
Tablet PC(Korea Product)
Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 9.7
Xiaomi Note3



■ Good Compatiblity Device For T.E - Q1 Except Some Issue

Samsung Note 3 : When you make a video, sometimes one part of the image is broken
LG G3 : If you take a thermal photo, sometimes you can see “Don’t Move” popup for 20seconds
NOTE : Normally, “Don’t Move” popup is 2~3seconds.

[frenky]

In used Te Q1 without problem on LG G3 and Note 3.
And with usb type-c adapter on Xiaomi Pocofone and Samsung S8.

I also tested many usb adapters:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/testing-micro-usb-to-type-c-otg-adapters-for-thermal-modules/

[TooQik]

I have a TE-M1 with USB type-C which works well on a Huawei Nova 3e. This phone is also known as the Huawei P20 Lite in other parts of the world.

The only real issue I currently have is I'm unable to get the full 30 fps frame rate on video recordings. 

I haven't tried any adapters with my camera, but I've tried the following ALOGIC USB type C extension cable and can confirm it doesn't work with the M1 on either Android or PC:

https://www.alogic.co/product-solutions/browse-by-category/cables-adapters/usb-c-cables-adapters/usb-c-cables/alogic-usb-3-1-usb-c-male-to-usb-c-female-extension-cable-male-to-female-black-1m.html

[Fraser]

TooQik,

Dongle type thermal cameras are a little like SDR radio receivers.... a relatively ‘dumb’ data collection ‘head’ with software doing the ‘clever’ data processing on the host computer. In the case if a thermal camera, the frame rate of the complete system, comprising Thermal dongle, phone and application, is very dependent upon the performance of the computer (your phone) and the efficiency of the App coding.

When FLIR created their Android F1G2 camera they had to decide which mobile phone would be the benchmark and base platform on which to develop their software App. They chose the Samsung S5 as roughly equivalent to the iPhone 4 that they were already coding for. With the iPhone they had a stable and well understood specification to code for. The Android platforms are very varied and a challenge to code for. FLIR found it challenging to achieve the same frame rate on the S5 that they achieved on the iPhone of the time. The iPhone was a lean meaning number crunching machine whereas Android based phones were a bit less lean and mean with a less refined OS in Android.

FLIR provided frame rate specifications that applied when the F1G2 was used with an Android phone equivalent to a Samsung S5. In the real world many users experienced lower frame rates and incompatibilities with certain phone makes or models. The iOS version of the F1G2 suffered no such issues as it is a mono platform based application that was fine tuned to perform very well.

Sadly when buying an Android compatible thermal camera dongle you are faced with the possibility of incompatibility, slower than expected frame rates and potentially flawed Apps and drivers that are not optimised for highest performance. Some manufacturers of such cameras provide a ‘recommended phone host’ list. The detailed hosts have been tested to provide adequate performance with the camera. Deviating from that lists recommended hosts brings the risk of lower performance or incompatability. If taking that path I recommend checking the processing power specifications of the recommended host phones and sourcing another phone that meets or exceeds that specification. Lower power processors generally mean lower performing frame rates in high frame rate cameras.

When you buy a complete thermal camera, such as the E4, you are buying a finely tuned system with data collector (Microbolometer) image processing (dedicated silicon) and a Microprocessor that is matched to the systems performance needs. The firmware is then written to make the most of the dedicated hardware and, unlike a phone, there are no others calls on the hardwares time or the need to be a ‘Generic’ embedded computer. The complete thermal camera system can be tuned (or de-tuned) to meet a specific specification.This is why I like complete thermal camera systems rather than Dongles hanging off of generic, multi tasking embedded computers.... aka mobile phones 

Thermal camera Dongle owners have proved this situation by connecting their dongle camera to a decent PC and running them to see what frame rate is achievable. From what I understand, full specified frame rate is easily achieved. A PC tends to provide a far more powerful host platform for the camera and software as it is not having to CPU throttle and other power saving tricks to extend battery life, the CPU is also far more capable than that of your average mobile phone. Just think about the power consumption figures of the two platforms ! So how come an ARM processor in an Exx series camera copes OK ? As I have stated, the processor is effectively dedicating all of its processing power to a single application and the software is tuned to provide the best possible use of the hardware platform. Yes it is Running Windows CE, but the firmware creates a dedicated embedded computer that focuses on thermal image data capture, image creation and display. Dedicated silicon in the cameras also takes much of the load off of the ARM processor.

I have written far more than intended, sorry, but I thought some background might help understand the issues surrounding dongle thermal cameras and their performance when used with some mobile phones.

Fraser

[TooQik]

Hi Fraser,

Appreciate the feedback regarding the dongle type thermal cameras.

Before I purchased the Huawei Nova 3e I used the TE-M1 on a Samsung Galaxy Tab A, which I have for work, in order to try and gauge performance. From this I spent some time researching other smartphone options and compared the processors against the Galaxy before settling on the Nova 3e. Unfortunately what I found was even though I'd stepped up in processor I was still getting 9 fps captures.

What I've done since, is take a look through the Thermal Expert Android application and discovered that the Android software itself was configured to lock the frame rate to 9 fps. Consequently I've trialed changing this value to 30 fps to attempt to get a higher frame rate. This worked but I'm still only seeing 15 fps with the Nova 3e. I'm still poking around in the Android software and looking at other options to see if I can squeeze some more frames out of it, as I'd prefer not to have to lug around my PC to get the full frame rate. One option I'm looking at is to disable the audio recording to see if this saves some processor power to allows high frames when recording.

[Fraser]

Interesting. I have read of frame rates on high speed dongles coming up short at around 15fps in other posts on this forum. I cannot recall which dongle camera they applied to though. It could have been Thermal Expert or ThermApp.

I know that the higher resolution 640 x 480 pixel 30fps dongle cameras demanded pretty much the latest and greatest phones in order to achieve 30fps when they were first released. Ultrapurple may know more about phone performance and frame rates as he has a 640 x 480 unit.

It might also be worth looking into whether your new phone is CPU throttling to control battery discharge or reduce heat production. I have heard of such being an issue with some phones. The CPU May be high spec but they suffer overheating and reduce the CPU speed to prevent a crash or failure. A thermal camera dongle is a high duty cycle CPU power hungry beast and some phones cannot cope with the sustained ‘load’ both on the power supply and the CPU cooling. Saying that, most phones can record high resolution video from their internal cameras these days. The CPU load presented by the thermal camera could be different though. Phones can certainly get pretty warm when used for prolonged visible light videos.

Fraser

[Ultrapurple]

My Therm-App Pro 640x480 25Hz camera makes very heavy demands on the accompanying phone. I use a Samsung Galaxy S7 with all the power settings at 'max performance' or equivalent. Even then, frame rate is dependent on what else may be running in the background on the phone.

Enabling Flight mode is a start, as it prevents a lot of background activities consuming as much processor as normal. It's also worth closing down all the extraneous apps (via the usual close-window method, rather than delving into system menus or suchlike).

With my S7 running its usual load of background apps it can manage 25Hz much of the time with ThermViewer and the 640x480 camera, including superresolution processing to 1280x960, but the frame rate can dip alarmingly (typically to 9Hz) for periods of a few seconds.

As far as I can recall there isn't a way to display frame rate on the stock app. ThermApp Plus -which is great on the 384x288 cameras - doesn't like my Therm-App Pro 640x480.

I have tried the various cameras (9Hz & 25Hz 384x288 and 25Hz 640x480) on different phones and found variable results. The lower res 9Hz camera works reasonably well on anything except a budget phone. Think of something mid-range to get 25Hz working smoothly, and you'll need something like a flagship model from a couple of years ago to get a reliable 25Hz on the 640x480 version.

I have no idea whether this compares directly with the ThermalExpert cameras but I imagine the processor load is comparable to the equivalent Therm-App model, as the cameras all require the phone to do essentially the same amount of per-pixel work.

[bugi]

I have no idea whether this compares directly with the ThermalExpert cameras but I imagine the processor load is comparable to the equivalent Therm-App model, as the cameras all require the phone to do essentially the same amount of per-pixel work.

The theoretically needed amount of per-pixel work might be comparable between cameras, but the actual work made in the app can depend on many things. For example, level of optimization of the algorithms, and how the app uses e.g. GPU to help with things (although this latter may need way more (read "too much") effort from the devs).

I just started to read through the TE SDK's decompiled code (as started by the old thread somewhere here). And I have to say, I'm not very impressed. For example, dead pixel filtering uses on the order of magnitude 100x more operations than needed. It may not be that bad compared to the full processing per frame, but, still...  And it is not even an advanced filter.

Maybe the latest version would have improved that. Lets see... ... Eh, nope, they now do it the same way, but twice per frame, and with floats instead of shorts (i.e. ints).  The floats-vs-ints doesn't matter as much, though, its only done on the dead pixels. But, still, if done in optimized way, they could do most of the math with integers.

The decompilation may have caused some of the weirdest things I've seen so far, but even when accounting for that, I'm facepalming quite a lot while going through it.

[Hyper_Spectral]

The S7, while only a few years old, is pretty outdated as far as mobile tech goes. I wouldn't be surprised if something like the Note 9 or S9 ends up being overkill for 640x480@30 but that doesn't change the fact substantiated by a previous comment that the code is likely inefficient in a multitude of ways.

[Fraser]

Yes sadly, like an SDR receiver, it is only as good as its hardware performance combined with the quality of the software writing. Crap software normally means a poor user experience...... just look at Hantek PC driven test equipment for examples ! The good news is that it is sometimes possible to produce third party software, just as forum members do here. Sadly they are often still forced to use the original manufacturers poorly designed software driver though

Fraser

[Ultrapurple]

The S7, while only a few years old, is pretty outdated as far as mobile tech goes.

Agreed. It does the job, but frankly only just. I think the point is that a slightly outdated phone has got the processing horsepower so a current phone should find it fairly easy.

Apart from cash, my main reason for not changing to a newer (Samsung) phone is that I am not certain the 8 and 9 support USB OTG in a way that works properly for dongle cameras. If anyone can confirm either way (with any dongle camera) then I'd be most grateful.

[bugi]

It seems that for TE, the driver can be rewritten (as already proven by couple members, using 3rd party USB driver on Windows). I'm currently seeing if rewriting an android driver would be a doable "summer project" for me. So far the chances for that look promising. Doing a nice UI on top of that might not be in the summer scope, though. But even getting the battery load a bit down from 6% in 14 minutes (display consuming 2% in that same time) would be a nice start.


As for Samsung 9 series OTG; I don't have much of cameras to connect with, but on my Note 9 this TE-Q1 seems to work ok now (it had some issues on first tries). I've also tested an USB-drive and a flash-stick, both ok. Many of the other devices (keyboards, mouses) I didn't test directly on the phone, but via typical USB-C hubs (same things that are used with small laptops), and they work directly. Both the hubs and the devices connected to them worked.

Hmm.. brings a question, would TE-Q1 work through a hub? Lets see... Yes. Note 9 -> USB-C based hub (with 3x USB-A ports, 1x USB-C port, and a HDMI out) -> TE-Q1 on the USB-C port.


Tested the app also on LG G7 ThinQ (Snapdragon 845, same as on e.g. US note 9's). Worked on first try, but gave periodic slowdowns, i.e. waving hand suddenly seemed to slow down and lag more, then soon speed back up.

[polar]

as stated above, I have troubles with the TE-Q1 at my Samsung S9. But it more looks like an mechanical issue to me, because sometimes the camera gets detected but if I change the attitude of the phone the connection is lost. In the beginning I thought that it has to be a loose connection, took the TE-Q1 apart, but all looked ok. Cleaned the socket in the phone, tested with other OTG stuff like external drives, USB-C to hdmi, all worked. Got some USB-C to mini/normal USB connectors, put the camera on the alpha/tablet/PC, all worked perfectly. Not sure what the problem is. When it got detected on the S9 it worked as expected. So in general I would assume that my problem is rather peculiar  and not a general problem using a TE-Q1 on a S9.

 

[Martin72]

Hi there,

I want to buy a TE-M1 and the official Vendor suggest to download the app first to test it on the phone.
So did I, download and installed it - After starting it, it will immediately fall back to the "desktop" - is this the normal behaviour when no cam was connected ?
My phone : Motorola G6 plus, Android 9.0

Martin

[IwuzBornanerd]

@bugi & @TooQik, have you determined whether the app is multi-threaded or not?  Or, since you are manipulating code, could you implement that; perhaps put the USB stuff & display stuff in separate threads from the image processing?  Quad/Octi-core phones could make good use of that.

[bugi]

Hi there,

I want to buy a TE-M1 and the official Vendor suggest to download the app first to test it on the phone.
So did I, download and installed it - After starting it, it will immediately fall back to the "desktop" - is this the normal behaviour when no cam was connected ?
My phone : Motorola G6 plus, Android 9.0

Martin

I'd say no. For me, on two different phones, with no camera attached, it starts up, and immediately changes to show its "gallery", from which I can exit back to main view as usual, which shows the GUI with gray background.

A theory: there could be a permission hiccup in play; I can't test it easily now, but maybe the phone doesn't realize to ask certain USB-permission before the gadget gets connected first time (during which Android might do it for the app, I don't know how that work is divided between app and OS), and the app might try to work without having it (e.g. tries to open connection), and gets a "nope!" from OS or something.

[TooQik]

Hi there,

I want to buy a TE-M1 and the official Vendor suggest to download the app first to test it on the phone.
So did I, download and installed it - After starting it, it will immediately fall back to the "desktop" - is this the normal behaviour when no cam was connected ?
My phone : Motorola G6 plus, Android 9.0

Martin

I have a similar chain of events to bugi but with a slight difference.

Like bugi, when I open the app with the camera disconnected, the Thermal Expert app opens, displays a loading icon and then changes to the Thermal Expert gallery. Unlike bugi, if I try to navigate back from the gallery the app closes and I'm returned to the home screen.

[bugi]

@bugi & @TooQik, have you determined whether the app is multi-threaded or not?  Or, since you are manipulating code, could you implement that; perhaps put the USB stuff & display stuff in separate threads from the image processing?  Quad/Octi-core phones could make good use of that.

As far as I can understand it so far, though that particular style of doing multi-threading is quite new to me (learned about it only month ago), I think the older versions don't really do proper multi-threading.  But it seems that in the years since they have improved the separation of frame reading and data processing to own threads with async buffering in between, and also have paid some attention to ensure that any read time (variations) would not affect overall frame rate.

I haven't started fully analyzing the new version yet, and have only looked at specific subsections when I got interested on some snippet on the older code.  I started with the older versions because they seemed to be simpler and thus a smaller first step towards understanding what it does. (I'm less interested in how it does things, understanding the 'what' lets me code my own version, and the 'how' part has so far looked mediocre, at least in the older versions.)

EDIT: that applied only to the SDK's .jar, which is sort of hybrid of a driver and half-way to app. The official app may do things differently - but likely the app uses the same code with just a GUI on top. (At least the SDK "driver" jar has public methods that have not been documented, but could be useful for the app.)

[TooQik]

@bugi & @TooQik, have you determined whether the app is multi-threaded or not?  Or, since you are manipulating code, could you implement that; perhaps put the USB stuff & display stuff in separate threads from the image processing?  Quad/Octi-core phones could make good use of that.

I haven't looked at whether it's multi-threaded or not. Could be well worth a look to try and get some extra performance out of it.

This is my first time playing around with Android apps, so don't expect too much from me though. 

[agh768]

I'm working on my own App right now. Looking at the version of the SDK i got in Dec. it handles USB and Image Processing in seperate threads. 

the flow is one thread to handle USB stuff then 2 image processing threads to handle frame processing. I haven't done any profiling yet and i don't really plan to. The version right now is pretty stable and has the new calibration methods that i need because i have really bad fix pattern noise on my sensor.


Looking at my OnePlus 3T with Snapdragon 821 chip i get pretty good framerate but yes after some time the thing gets toasty.

[bugi]

And the LG G7 ThinQ now had start-issues, not showing "loading" or image, just gray background. Simple restart of the app didn't help. Opened the running app list and closed the app from there, then restarted, and worked correctly.

[Martin72]

Guys,
When I read this, I´ll take a step away from buying anything that wasn´t a stand-alone cam….

[Hyper_Spectral]

Some interesting development going on in here. Thoughts on publishing your code on GitHub? Even if an alpha/beta

[billyt]

my te q1 with usb type-c works ok on Xiaomi Pocofone but has a lot of noise even after calibration, i was expecting better viewing results. i am thinking of selling it and try xtherm t3s with the thermviewer app.