I do not believe the Seek images are radiometric JPEGs - instead I think it just saves 2 images, one visual, one thermal. However I imagine with the Seek SDK you should be able to make an app that saves radiometric JPEGs or other metadata.
If they take a pair of images, can you please post up some of the thermal part of the pair? I'd be interested in looking at these.
I do not believe the Seek images are radiometric JPEGs - instead I think it just saves 2 images, one visual, one thermal. However I imagine with the Seek SDK you should be able to make an app that saves radiometric JPEGs or other metadata.
If they take a pair of images, can you please post up some of the thermal part of the pair? I'd be interested in looking at these.
Personally I don't have a seek thermal, but the thermal images are just the 832x624 images you see everywhere. The app outputs just jpegs, and there is no image blending done between visual / thermal. The only reason the visual image is captured is for future review.
Look at this for example: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/yet-another-cheap-thermal-imager-incoming/msg673081/#msg673081
The 832x624 images you see there (and in most places online) are straight from the seek. You can use google to just search for images with that resolution: http://puu.sh/j0O1c/e80ebfcf1e.jpg
You can get raw data from Seek with sgstair desktop application: https://github.com/sgstair/winusbdotnet
And here is info about raw frames that you will get from Seek module:
https://github.com/lod/seek-thermal-documentation/wiki/Frame
Are you telling me that the Seek app does not save any radiometric data at all whatsoever? All it saves is a JPEG image that is identical to what you see in the preview on-screen image as you are pointing it around at things? Why not? What's the purpose of a thermal imager other than to save RAW data? I wonder if the guys that made this kind of missed the point of thermal imagers? I mean it can't even be explained away by saying that it was the easier option to write JPEGs, because it's not. It's much easier to write a raw byte array to a file than to run a compression algorithm that requires external dependencies like libjpeg.dll. Are you SURE that there's no setting in the app to configure it to use write out raw radiometric data to a TIFF or PNG file?
And by the way, I'm not gonna compile that program. I don't have the right version of Visual Studio to do so (I have VS 2010, but it requires a newer version). And my previous request that somebody else compile it for me and post up the EXE file has so far gone unanswered.
I ended up downloading this http://dumb.ro/files/ThermalView.zip instead. It is a fully compiled EXE file, and runs perfectly (now I just need to buy the Seek thermal camera). I'm not sure if it's better quality than the program you mentioned, but until somebody does the aforementioned favor that I asked for, and compiles a copy of the program that you mentioned, and posts the EXE file here for me to download, I have no way to compare them.
How do those programs work? Do they just send the same commands the app does (as a result of having reverse engineered the official app and protocol), and thus allow the PC to truly communicate with the Seek thermal imager? Or do they involve a custom-made 3-connector cable, that allows the camera, smart phone, and PC, to all connect together, and then just have the PC siphon off the image stream as the thermal imager tries to send the image stream to the phone (but let the phone send all the initialization commands and other control commands to the thermal imager so that it operates correctly).
How do those programs work? Do they just send the same commands the app does (as a result of having reverse engineered the official app and protocol), and thus allow the PC to truly communicate with the Seek thermal imager? Or do they involve a custom-made 3-connector cable, that allows the camera, smart phone, and PC, to all connect together, and then just have the PC siphon off the image stream as the thermal imager tries to send the image stream to the phone (but let the phone send all the initialization commands and other control commands to the thermal imager so that it operates correctly).
We sniffed the USB traffic.
Personally I got stuck after sniffing the initialization sequence, because my sniffing setup systematically crashed immediately after, so I ended up using the frame request and the disconnect request as described in sgstair's code.
One thing I noticed is that my initialization routine is slightly different from what sgstair found, which I believe is because I used a newer version of the android app. Most of the initialization sequence is just reading configuration data from the device, which we don't know what it means or how to use it and can probably be safely skipped, but all implementations so far are still reading it anyway and do nothing with it.
There's a lot we don't know about the protocol - maybe Seek will reveal some of that information in the SDK documentation or if the SDK will be robust enough, completely remove the need to directly talk to the device.
Edit:
Attached are 3 images, in both PNG and RAW format.
What I'm asking, is will I need my phone to use this PC software? Or will I be able to use a Micro-USB to USB converter cable, and attach the Seek thermal imager directly to the PC, and allow the Seek imager to act as a kind of "thermal webcam" with my PC?
What I'm asking, is will I need my phone to use this PC software? Or will I be able to use a Micro-USB to USB converter cable, and attach the Seek thermal imager directly to the PC, and allow the Seek imager to act as a kind of "thermal webcam" with my PC?
You won't need your phone.
I got an email from Seek with a request for participation in Seekware SDK pre-release. Maybe innovative 3rd party apps will help Seek against Goliath.
The sign up page has the Windows SDK scheduled for release on 07/15/2015. Better late than never. I signed up.
Thanks for the heads up, that made me check my personal e-mail and sure enough there it was
Neat, looking forward to your reports.
I got an email from Seek with a request for participation in Seekware SDK pre-release. Maybe innovative 3rd party apps will help Seek against Goliath.
The sign up page has the Windows SDK scheduled for release on 07/15/2015. Better late than never. I signed up.
Thanks for the heads up, that made me check my personal e-mail and sure enough there it was
I guess I missed the email on Friday but I did get my link to download the SDK and they are also providing a free OTG PC cable for just supplying your sneaker mail address.
Haven't look at it in detail yet and I'm not sure if the license I accepted prevents me from saying more. I'll check, but not sure I'll have time today to play with it.