Project 136: Thermal Imager Project Update 15: Concept Complete
by PhoenixGames on Oct.09, 2015, under Inventions, Tutorials
I believe I have finished the prototype of this project. I have not yet made the housing or mounting for it, but the actual functionality is done.
I think it worked out well, and the resolution of the images is high, except that the Thermal Camera needs some residual source of heat to produce decent quality images.
I took some images with the camera during the day recently, in the same place as the previous images, and they came out very well. When I took the images at night, they contained nothing but garbage data. I believe, as I said in my previous post, the Lepton thermal imaging module requires some heat to operate. During the day, the sun warms the environment, allowing things like walls, shrubbery, etc, to show up brightly.
However, at night, where there is no heat from the sun, these same objects do not show up. That means that the FLIR Lepton module is really designed more for engineering use, conducting energy audits, etc, and not for night vision or night photography.
Thermal imaging cameras designed for these purposes are much more expensive, (many thousands of Euros) and the reason is no doubt due to their greater sensitivity and ability to produce clear images even in an environment with no heat sources, such as outside at night.
I have some more images to post of the difference between the images taken at night and those taken during the day, but I have to fix a bug first where my camera only takes 99 images, and fails to save any more.
