
DIY thermal vision shoots 360° panoramas - SauliusLukse
http://kurokesu.com/main/2017/04/18/diy-thermal-vision-shoots-360-panoramas/
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joshvm
An alternative is the 8x8 Grid-EYE from Panasonic, costs around £30. The
Melexis equivalent is a 16x4 which costs about the same. Note you'll need to
fill in a fairly lengthy export/release form to get hold of the Grid-EYE
sensors. I haven't had any problems ordering them from Farnell, just tell them
what your project is.

Both are fairly easy to talk to over I2C. You can make a passable wireless
(low-res) thermal camera using something like a Particle Photon.

The MLX90640 isn't out until September unfortunately.

NB: Actually Farnell have the Grid-EYE for only £16, but the full range ( -20
to 100) model is backordered. You can still get the 0 to 80 version easily.

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tossandturn
I used the Melexis MLX90260/MLX90261 back in December 2014 for some sensors
research at work, and they were not very helpful and the documentation was
appallingly ambiguous for important parts of the programming; plus, it
offloads all the mathematics (not insignificant amounts of floating point and
statistics) to your processor (not a good deal for embedded work). The output,
once processed, though, was very accurate and provided for additional
processing to make more use of the information than similar offerings.

The Panasonic Grid-Eye offering was much easier to use, and did not require
additional processing power just to make use of the information.

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joshvm
I've used their single point IR sensor before, just had a look at the
documentation for the 16x4 - holy hell that's a lot of steps just to get a
calibrated sensor reading! Do they provide a C library for it, or are you
expected to write and test your own?

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donquichotte
Nice project! This reminds me of a beautiful series of blog posts of a guy who
built a single pixel pinhole thermal camera:

First post:
[http://orbides.org/photobot.php?lng=eng&mode=making1](http://orbides.org/photobot.php?lng=eng&mode=making1)

Sample image:
[http://orbides.org/photobot.php?lng=eng&mode=pic](http://orbides.org/photobot.php?lng=eng&mode=pic)

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SauliusLukse
Awesome project! Have to pimp it :)

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Kurtz79
HN hug of death strikes again.

Cached version:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VQlpQWh...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VQlpQWhZ6OIJ:kurokesu.com/main/2017/04/18/diy-
thermal-vision-shoots-360-panoramas/)

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mablae
I already contacted the site owner. He is doing what he can right now ;-)

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SauliusLukse
Stress test! Seems like my web page needs some optimizations :)

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fauria
I built a similar, although much less sophisticated prototype at a hackathon a
few months ago:
[https://github.com/fauria/thermoman-360](https://github.com/fauria/thermoman-360)

In case someone finds it useful, I published a Seeed Studio recipe:
[http://www.seeed.cc/Grove-MLX90614-p-1157.html](http://www.seeed.cc/Grove-
MLX90614-p-1157.html) and adapted an Arduino library:
[https://github.com/fauria/bildr-mlx90614](https://github.com/fauria/bildr-
mlx90614) for the MLX90614.

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eb0la
Did Endesa / Opinno provided you with the hardware? Congrats for the prize,
btw !

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fauria
Thank you very much! No, I brought my own stuff, they provided the space,
food, etc but no HW.

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adolph
When I read IR in the post, I thought, "well that's not thermal, is it?" and
the thought was incorrect. FLIR's page [1] has a more understandable to me
summary than StackExchange [2]. Also interesting is how lensing works with
radiation in the IR spectrum [3].

 _Thermal cameras cannot use regular glass lenses, as glass will reflect
thermal radiation rather than allowing the radiation to pass through the
lenses. Commonly used materials for thermal lenses are Germanium (Ge),
Chalcogenide glass, Zinc Selenide (ZnSe) and Zinc Sulfide (ZnS)._

1\.
[http://www.flir.com/cvs/americas/en/view/?id=30052](http://www.flir.com/cvs/americas/en/view/?id=30052)
2\. [https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6869/what-is-
the...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6869/what-is-the-
difference-between-thermal-and-infrared-imaging) 3\.
[https://www.axis.com/fi/en/learning/web-
articles/technical-g...](https://www.axis.com/fi/en/learning/web-
articles/technical-guide-to-network-video/lenses-for-thermal-cameras)

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moritzsimon
This guy did a hackier- and probably even cheaper - DIY camera a few month ago
[http://www.niklasroy.com/project/195/DIY_thermal_imaging](http://www.niklasroy.com/project/195/DIY_thermal_imaging)

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Etheryte
This is really cool, given how expensive thermal cams can be. The main sensor
used by the author (Melexis MLX90614) costs only ~14$ at my local retailer,
you can probably get it a bit cheaper if you order online.

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dharma1
Flir and Seek have pretty good usb thermal cameras that attach to your
smartphone for about $250 if you want something ready made

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userbinator
"Flir and Seek" sounds like the modern high-tech version of "Hide and Seek"...
played using thermal cameras, of course.

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dharma1
ready or not, here I scan

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mhb
Not as much DIY, but for $260, Sparkfun has a nice looking 80 x 60 FLiR
thermal imager:
[https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13233](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13233)

~~~
SauliusLukse
Good camera candidate to build FAST thermal panorama rig!

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phaedrus
Holy moly! Two axis stepper motor controller for $67?! (You should check out
the store connected with that site.) This reminds me I really need to finish
my single-scanline CdS cell camera project...

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IshKebab
Yeah it's a puny Arduino based one though. Look at the heat sinks. Don't waste
your money - unless you really need the space the best ones are the ones that
look like this:

[http://www.leadshine.com/series.aspx?type=products&category=...](http://www.leadshine.com/series.aspx?type=products&category=stepper-
products&producttype=stepper-drives&series=DM)

100 times better and they're not even any more expensive - $31 on aliexpress.

~~~
augustt
Wouldn't something like this be sufficient in many cases?
[https://www.pololu.com/product/1182](https://www.pololu.com/product/1182)

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cr0sh
It would depend on the amperage of the steppers involved, but sure - though
I'm partial to the DRV8825 - it's considered a better driver in the 3d printer
realm.

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amelius
I always wonder: how do you find the parts you need to build such things, and
how do you make sure they fit together without spending enormous amounts of
time in various online parts shops?

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veli_joza
In my experience, either you get exposed to various parts at your
workplace/college, or you stand on shoulders of similar projects.

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kozak
I always wanted to try to do this with RF wavelengths like 2.4 GHz.

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awqrre
Mapping WiFi Signals in 3 Dimensions: [http://hackaday.com/2015/02/17/mapping-
wifi-signals-in-3-dim...](http://hackaday.com/2015/02/17/mapping-wifi-signals-
in-3-dimensions/)

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fudged71
I'd forgotten about this project, really loved this!!

