Simple Thermal Imager With A Lepton Module

November 24, 2014 by Ethan Zonca 21 Comments

[Andrew] designed a simple thermal imager using the FLIR Lepton module, an STM32F4 Nucleo development board, and a Gameduino 2 LCD. The whole design is connected using jumper wires, making it easy to duplicate if you happen to have all the parts lying around (who doesn’t have a bunch of thermal imaging modules lying around!?).

The STM32F4 communicates with the Lepton module using a driver that [Andrew] wrote over a 21MHz SPI bus. The driver parses SPI packets and assembles frames as they are received. Images can be mapped to pseudocolor using a couple different color maps that [Andrew] created. His code also supports min/max scaling to map the pseudocolor over the dynamic range present in the image.

Unfortunately the Lepton module that [Andrew]’s design is based is only sold in large quantities. [Andrew] suggests ripping one out of a FLIR ONE iPhone case which are more readily available. We look forward to seeing what others do with these modules once they are a bit easier to buy.

Building The World’s Smallest Thermal Camera

September 7, 2014 by James Hobson 18 Comments

[Mike Harrison], the mastermind behind electricstuff.co.uk has just finished reverse engineering the Lepton module found in thermal imaging cameras — he then created his own, and perhaps the world’s smallest thermal camera.

He took apart the Flir One iPhone thermal imaging unit and pulled out the magical part that makes it all possible — the Lepton module. It only has a resolution of 80×60 pixels, but in the world of thermal imaging, it’s pretty decent. You can buy it for $250 (for the module) in order quantities of 1000 straight from Flir.

His blog has all the details about figuring out how to interface with the module, and it is really quite impressive. Once he had it all understood he set out to build it into a small thermal camera. The case is machined out of black acrylic, and an iPod nano screen is used as the display, as 80×60 scales up nicely to the 320×240 resolution of the iPod. A home-brew PCB connects to the module, has a voltage regulator and charging circuit for the lithium ion battery — which is then connected to a prototype iPod nano PCB with some of the features removed — he says it was a nightmare connecting it all, and we don’t blame him, that’s some serious hacking skill!

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A Better, Cheaper Smartphone Thermal Imager

July 24, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 35 Comments

thermal

For the last few years, the prices of infrared thermal imaging devices have fallen through the floor, down from tens of thousands of dollars a decade ago, to just about a grand for a very high-resolution device. This dramatic drop in price was brought about by new sensors, and at the very low-end, there are quite a few very inexpensive low resolution thermal imaging devices.

The goal now, it seems, is to figure out some way to add these infrared devices to a smartphone or tablet. There have been similar projects and Kickstarters before, but [Marius]’s entry for The Hackaday Prize is undercutting all of them, and doing it in a way that’s far, far too clever.

Previous ‘thermal imagers on a smartphone’ projects include the Mu Thermal Camera, a $300 Kickstarter reward that turned out to be vaporware. The IR-Blue is yet another Kickstarter we’ve seen, and something that’s actually shipping for about $200. [Marius] expects his thermal imager to cost just $99. He’s getting away with this pricing with a little bit of crazy electronics, and actually designing a minimum viable product.

Both the Mu Thermal Camera and the IR-Blue communicate with their smartphone host via Bluetooth. [Marius] felt radio modules were unnecessary and inspired by the HiJack system where low-power sensors are powered and read through a headphone jack, realized he could do better.

Always the innovator, [Marius] realized he could improve upon the HiJack power harvesting solution, and got everything working with a prototype. The actual hardware in the sensor is based on an engineering sample of the Omron D6T-1616L IR array module, a 16×16 array of IR pixels displaying thermal data on a portable device at 4 FPS.

It’s interesting, for sure, and half the price and quadruple the resolution of the IR-Blue. Even if [Marius] doesn’t win The Hackaday Prize, he’s at least got a winning Kickstarter on his hands. Video of the 8×8 pixel prototype below.

The project featured in this post is an entry in The Hackaday Prize. Build something awesome and win a trip to space or hundreds of other prizes.

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Manufacturer-Crippled Flir E4 Thermal Camera Hacked To Perform As High-End Model

November 4, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 136 Comments

Last month, [Mike] took a look at the Flir E4 thermal imaging camera. It’s a great tool for those occasions when you need the vision of a Predator, but what he found inside was substantially cooler: it seems the engineers behind the Flir E4 made their lives easier by making the circuits inside the $1000 E4 the same as the $6000 Flir E8.

This only means one thing, and [Mike] has delivered. He’s upgraded the firmware in the Flir E4 to the E8, giving it a vastly increased resolution – 80×40 for the E4 to 320×240 for the E8.

The hack itself is as easy as putting the serial number of the E4 in a config file, zipping a few files up, and installing it with the Flir tools. An amazingly simple mod (with an awesome teardown video) that turns a $1000 thermal imaging camera into the high-end $6000 model.

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Thermal Keypad Combo Snooping

November 23, 2005 by Eliot 32 Comments

thermal image

This is interesting demo of how residual heat in a safe keypad could expose the key sequence. Using a hand-held thermal imaging device (not cheap) you can read which buttons on a keypad were pressed 5 to 10 minutes after the event from up to 10 meters away. Even though each key press is momentary there is enough heat transfer to distinguish the button in a thermal image. The sequence can be determined since the first button pressed has the least heat. This method break s when buttons are reused in the sequence, but being able to see the unused keys cuts down the number of possible permutations.

[thanks Mr. Mistoffolees]

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Small Mammals Appear To Have A Secret Infrared Sense

July 22, 2024 by Lewin Day 23 Comments

If you’ve ever watched Predator, you’ve noted the tactical advantage granted to the alien warrior by its heat vision. Indeed, even with otherwise solid camoflauge, Dutch and his squad ended up very much the hunted.

And yet, back in reality, it seems the prey might be the one with the ability to sense in the infrared spectrum. Research has now revealed this unique ability may all be down to the hairs on the back of some of the smallest mammals.

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Hackaday Prize 2022: Hedge Watcher Aims To Save Precious Bird Life

October 13, 2022 by Lewin Day 12 Comments

Hedges aren’t just a pretty garden decoration. They’re also a major habitat for many species of insects, birds, and other wildlife. In some areas, a lot of hedge trimming goes during the time that local birds are raising their fledglings, which causes harm at a crucial time. Thus, [Johann Elias Stoetzer] and fellow students were inspired to create Hedge Watcher.

Birds can easily blend in with their surroundings, but thermal cameras are a great way to spot them.

The concept is simple – using thermal vision to spot birds inside a hedge when they may not otherwise be easily visible. Many species blend in with their surroundings in a visual manner, so thermal imaging is a great way to get around this. It can help to avoid destroying nests or otherwise harming birds when trimming back hedges. The idea was sourced from large-scale agricultural operations, which regularly use thermal cameras mounted on drones to look for wildlife before harvesting a field.

However, staring at a thermal camera readout every few seconds while trimming hedges isn’t exactly practical. Instead, the students created an augmented reality (AR) monocular to allow the user to trim hedges at the same time as keeping an eye on the thermal camera feed. Further work involved testing a binocular AR headset, as well as a VR headset. The AR setups proved most useful as they allowed for better situational awareness while working.

It’s a creative solution to protecting the local birdlife, and is to be applauded. There’s plenty of hubris around potential uses for augmented reality, but this is a great example of a real and practical one. And, if you’re keen to experiment with AR yourself, note that it doesn’t have to break the bank either!