Infrared thermal usb camera

[Matt Wilkinson]

Hi
At the recent Technical Workshop in Stuttgart, we heard from a number of people operating infrared cameras.  The reports were encouraging but the cameras are expensive. Could i ask what people on here think of these cheaper cameras?:

https://www.flir.co.uk/products/boson/?model=20640A012
    Longwave infrared; 7.5 µm – 13.5 µm
    640 x 512
    60Hz
    12 µm pixel

Thanks!

[Johann]

Hi Matt,

as you may already know, we bought our camera from InfraTec. I think the camera itself has almost the same specifications. However to increase the sensitifity we chose the greatest entrance lens that was available. In our case the lens diameter is 120 mm, while the field of view is 8 x 6 degree. I would not recommend to increase the field of view, because you are loosing sensitifity and resolution. We would prefer to have an even narrower field of view to reduce false alarm. But that is probably also depending on the applied object detection algorithm. Unfortunately i only know the price for the camera including the lens. It starts from ~29k, with some extras like low-noise-detector and increased resolution (1024x768) we ended up at almost 40k.
The cameras that you found look promising. With 60 Hz they provide an even higher frame rate. It would be nice to hear the price.

Best regards,
Johann

[ewan.schafer]

Hi Matt,

Just want to echo what Johann said: the sensor seems nice but make sure you're getting one with a decent sized aperture to make sure you have enough sensitivity. Our camera can struggle distant aeroplanes when they're lower in the sky & under certain weather conditions.

This one seems like a nice model:
https://www.flir.co.uk/products/boson/?model=20640A006

But unfortunately, because they probably have to grow some kind of fancy crystal for the lens, I expect that the price is going to scale significantly with the amount of glass that you're buying.

Let me know how how it goes if you decide to get one, they could be interesting for us too!