EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Products => Thermal Imaging => Topic started by: alpher on January 06, 2021, 07:41:20 pm
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Have $280 in eBay bucks to spend this month and was thinking of maybe getting a cheap thermal camera.
I can pony up an extra hundred or so, what's worth buying there in that price range?
I'd preffer a standalone camera, but if there are much better options for the phones it has to be Android USB-C.
Aprreciate your suggestions.
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It depends on what you want to do.
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Nothing in particular, just looking for the best bang for the ammount that I can spend.
General use, checking house insulation, wiring etc. I think that for this little money I wont be able to get anything capable of pcb viewing? I'm I right?
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"What would you recommend in $250~$400 price range on eBay?"
Something in the $150 to $300 range on the open market. What are "eBay bucks"? Are they like Monopoly money?
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ht-301
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Infiray T2L or T2search
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Nothing in particular, just looking for the best bang for the ammount that I can spend.
General use, checking house insulation, wiring etc. I think that for this little money I wont be able to get anything capable of pcb viewing? I'm I right?
Depends on whether you are up for some extra work.
A bang for buck list should include 'ex fire' cameras as the cores are good to excelent and a bit of disassmbly will allow you to refocus it for PCB work. They will be stand alone, either battery or external power, and you can also think about the kind of 'core liberation' camera rebuild as I put here:
http://www.fire-tics.co.uk/project1/index.htm (http://www.fire-tics.co.uk/project1/index.htm)
Bill
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In my opinion, just above that is where I start thinking the options look good.
Recently bought a Flir B50 as a gift for right around $450, the price/performance leader around there is probably the TG267 at $500 (retail, it's a pretty good deal at that given the thermal resolution and MSX capability). If you look for used firefighting gear, you can get decent resolution and sometimes framerate cheaper, but you're going to have more trouble getting close focus (any kind of board inspection).
Something like the Seek Reveal XR is usually around that price though thermal image quality is potentially a bit worse (these units are documented well around here). Other options like the HT-301 can be fine, but generally while you're getting some more thermal resolution, the actual image performance isn't as good as equivalent units using better cores.
If you're willing to consider thermal cores as well, rather than just handheld units, you can get a bit more bang for your buck (resolution and/or framerate) that way, but you will need an analog TV and to hack together a power supply and such.
Also worth mentioning: the phone mount units like the FLIR One and similar are generally cheaper than standalone units and can offer pretty good thermal performance and resolution, you just need to make sure you pick the right one for your phone and then not move to an incompatible phone to keep using it (or keep your old one).
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If somebody just wants to thermally image a PCB, you cant go wrong just buying several pieces of LCD film for a couple of bucks. That will let you see hot spots on PCBs with a high level of accuracy. Really.
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Bought this:
(https://i.imgur.com/GqPHxgj.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/OXKo4Nt.jpg)
Whatddya think?
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Bought this:
Whatddya think?
Just curious, but did you happen to order it from banggood? I ordered the UTI 260B near the beginning of Dec and the order has been stuck in processing since then. |O
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I ordered it from eBay, it came in a week or so.