Thermal Imaging

[TGB]

Saw one of these:

Seek Thermal Camera review - CNET attached to an iPhone last week. For the owner, it was just another gadget he's thinking of stocking. For me it was a novelty with possible real world occasional use; but too expensive when I came to pricing. For Android it's approx. £170 and for iOS it's £250 for the std. versions. They do an 'XR', which has an extended range but tighter working field.

 

Apparently it eats battery life but weighs next to nothing and is easy to use. Just point it in the general direction and away it goes. You get an instant & accurate infrared background image, overlaid with central image temp. in either C or F. Hot spots and cold spots are easily distinguishable in their surroundings. You can capture results on video to play back later for reference. You can also change he colour scheme to one you find aesthetically pleasing. In use, it was able to register/show the difference, where a hand had rested on a granite work-surface for 30secs. or so and then removed, from the surrounding stone. You could clearly see finger marks etc. Their dog running round the garden at night was no problem.

 

Now it might not be to everyone's needs but if you're a sparks, plumber or heating engineer. Or simply someone who'd like to see how thermally insulative their home is and doesn't want to pay out for a professional survey. This could be very useful.

Edited January 18, 2016 by TGB

[Gray git]

Wounder if it could spot bats roosting in trees during a survey.

Didn't someone start using thermal imaging as a form of decay detection in mature trees as a hollow or degraded section of tree would be a different temp to more solid or activit area.

[Gary Prentice]

There's been a fair bit of research for decay detection, not sure where it's at right now. That was my initial thought when I read the article.

[TGB]

You'd need the 'XR' version to detect animals at distance. But as said, the field of vision is smaller too.