In case you weren’t aware, thermal vision units have seen huge price reductions lately. There’s a few on the market for under $300! While that might still seem expensive, remember, it’s thermal-freaking-vision. [Tim] bought a Seek Thermal as soon as it was available, and just recently finished his first project with it — giving his car a thermal HUD for driving at night.
The Seek Thermal is a small thermal imaging unit that has a micro USB attachment for phones. Simply plug it in, and your phone becomes the preview window. But for mounting on your car, you can’t have it behind a window, because most glass is not transparent to heat wavelengths, so [Tim] had to get creative.
He designed and 3D printed a magnetic mount for it to sit on the hood of his car. But in the case any debris from the road hit it, he wanted to protect the lens. So he started looking up thermally transparent materials — turns out they’re really expensive.
The most typical material used for a thermal window on factory equipment is GaAs (Gallium Arsenide) or ZnSe (Zinc Selenide) — both with pretty hefty price tags. So [Tim] started doing some research of his own. It turns out some plastic grocery bags are actually quite thermally transparent — the trick was finding one that was optically clear. He tested everything he could get his hands on, and eventually found a plastic photo sleeve that did the trick — unfortunately it’s not going to provide that much protection…
The future is here.
Prize reductions? That’s a shame.
Thanks, fixed.
He’s Canadian which next to United Kingdom is the next in list for shouldn’t be making such mistakes.. Followed by Americans, then everyone else because everyone wants the baby language to be the neutral dialect..
Well, double dot to you!
Awesome finally an affordable capable thermal camera. Been waiting for years for this.
This looks like a pretty cool product, but it is not an HUD.
Exactly! Looking to the screen down there might cause more distraction than without using it at all. This information should be an overlay inside your field of view not outside it.
This is a very good application for augmented reality glasses..
Might be illegal in many states, both the augmented reality glasses as well as a home-brew HUD..
The major concern for most hackers should be whether you can make it work, not if some loser at the state capitol wrote a bad law. That being said, you do have to worry about legality, but I believe it should be mostly from the perspective of getting bad laws changed.
It’s quite interesting, but it couldn’t see a man crossing the road… that’s a fail for me.
That should be easy to fix. Program the colors on the display to only show around human body temperature.
Not quite that easy. The body’s internal temperature is fairly constant, but the temperature of the person’s clothes and skin will vary depending on the weather.
Maybe he’s a reptilian alien in disguise.
:-O Rodney!
You’ve got ten minutes to save the world from the reptilian alien!
Can this be used for autonomous vehicles? Like a heat seeking missile, have the car follow the other vehicle in front of you while you take a nap or watch the scenery or take a selfie lol.
Also, they are great for stealing peoples PIN numbers at the check-out counter…or so I’ve heard.
Maybe a very slow moving vehicle. The low refresh rate is there to ensure it would be difficult to use it for something like a heat seeking missile.
A kid gets arrested for taking a clock to school, and you want to make something that looks like an autonomous car bomb?
Would definitely go for FLIR Lepton. Seek has pretty poorly aligned optics. See Mike’s video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzsTsFvHss8
In this particular scenario accuracy isn’t that important, the higher resolution and higher update rates of the Seek (compared to the FLIR) is more so.
How do you know that? Last I checked I never saw a published spec for fps
I can’t understand a single word he is saying
Does it show deer hiding on the woods, waiting for my car to go by? The whistles don’t work, right now I relying on the “magical” protection provided by a piece of horn left behind by one I hit last year…….
So far it’s kept them away, but I would rather put my faith in some real magic…
I feel your pain, I’ve got ‘roos to deal with. I do the best I can with a pair of spot lamps on the bull bar. Per the video, if the ambient temp is roughly body temp, we’re not going to see our mammals. Perhaps it’ll work better at night.
Can’t wait for the SWIR sensors to come down in price. They can see in fog and work well at night. If any one know of a source less then $2000 or near it please post it.
You might be able to use a piece of silicon as a window as well, a little but tougher and you can make a waterproof enclosure. You will loose some sensitivity since the transmission is not great a the wavelengths they are sensitive at.
Would the quartz window off an old EPROM work?
No, quartz peters out in the mid infrared region. I think around 3um, I can’t remember for sure. These cameras are sensitive from 9 to 14um.
I noticed while working at Wescam that many plastics are quite transparent. For instance, a plastic electric fan with white blades was easy to see clearly through with a 3 to 5 micron MWIR camera, even when it wasn’t moving. The windows used for high performance stabilized camera systems are indeed the expensive ones mentioned, but when making a US$250k on up (and WAY up) product, ’tis worth the money. Kudos for finding more personally affordable options!
>90% transmission from 400-1500nm (Vis – NIR) for $14
http://www.edmundoptics.com/optics/windows-diffusers/visible-windows/clear-optical-cast-plastic-windows/43925/
If you want LWIR (8000-15000nm) these will get you there for $149 and $44, respectively
http://www.edmundoptics.com/optics/windows-diffusers/ultraviolet-uv-infrared-ir-windows/zinc-selenide-znse-windows/68490/
http://www.edmundoptics.com/optics/windows-diffusers/ultraviolet-uv-infrared-ir-windows/sodium-chloride-nacl-windows/68812/
Thin and PE should do it? PLA is pretty transparent to IR too, but that may be harder to come by in a foil. 3D print (or otherwise) an enclosure with a window that you cover with your foil of choice.
PLA is used for biodegradable transparent drink cups… maybe try that?
A few thoughts come to mind WRT windows:
It’s probably worth mentioning that the fresnel lenses used in PIR sensors are made using PE. As a point of interest; a place I worked at was using PE (not much different from cutting board material) to make LWIR/mm-wave fresnel lenses. Doesn’t have to be clear to visible light to work at LWIR…
My guess is the biggest challenges for a PE “window” are:
1) getting a decent optical surface finish in such a material
2) how thick you can be, before the attenuation gets too high for such use
I’d personally like to try this stuff:
http://www.edmundoptics.com/optics/windows-diffusers/specialty-windows/infrared-ir-material-windows/2043/?ref=related-products
Plastics are cheaper than mineral lenses, anyway, and aren’t hygroscopic (and water soluble, lol) like NaCl. Kinda ruins your optical surface finish when that happens :-)
-N
Someone else mentioned deer. That was my thought too. This could really be useful for those who have to drive at night in the country.
At 2:36 there is a lcd dashboard on the console. Someone know what is it?
Torque on android by the look of it
Thank you
Since you’re around Rochester (Brockport), what’s a deer look like through this? Are they more visible? Maybe drive around Northampton park at night!