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How do you fix a problem you can't even see?

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In smaller systems, it's not that hard. Air leak on your tire, just throw some soapy water on it

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and find the bubbles. Easy, but in a larger system,

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like our workshop's compressed air hoses, it could take a fluke to find a tiny leak somewhere.

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A fluke II915 acoustic imager to be exact.

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This $25,000 handheld camera does not work

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like a normal camera, you know, taking in light and transforming it into internet cloud.

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Instead, it takes in sound and uses it to find leaks

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and equipment malfunctions, even detecting noises

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beyond the range of human hearing. It then represents that audio like a heat map.

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So let's see if we can use it to find some really useful stuff like the leak in our system

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and maybe even a segue to our sponsor.

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Like so many of our videos, this one was prompted by an actual problem.

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That, obviously it helps a little that we shoot most of our workshop videos

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on the other side of this wall, but it's still been a major source of disruptions

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over the last few years. Now, an obvious solution would be to just

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not have a compressed air system, but that's not really an option.

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We use it for everything from cleaning things off to cutting and polishing to hacking things apart.

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Excuse me. And I've done a fair bit of sandblasting with it too,

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mostly for my personal motorbike project. So, okay, we need an air compressor.

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Deal with it, right? Well, see, it wouldn't be that big of a problem,

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except that somewhere in the system is a leak.

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So the compressor goes off way more often,

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disrupting us way more often than it needs to.

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That's where Fluke's acoustic imager comes in. Theoretically with this, in a matter of minutes,

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I should be able to track down the leak, saving us both time and money.

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Theoretically, I'm gonna put that to the test. I've never actually used this before,

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so I don't know how I'm gonna tell the difference between RHVAC system and air leaking out of a hose,

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but presumably it's pretty easy.

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Oh, there's something in this wall.

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Oh, there's something bouncing off this wall, I think.

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You'll get a lot of sounds reflecting from that sometimes.

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That makes sense. Keep an eye on the right side,

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and you'll see the range of frequency band that it's looking for.

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Okay, I feel like I could move pretty quickly at this point.

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Oh, hello, Captain, I think we've found something.

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Right there. Okay, but would I even be able to hear this?

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Oh, I can. I would have to be within like 10 inches of it, though.

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One to go? And that took like two minutes.

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Oh, geez. Okay, once you know what you're looking for,

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it stands out like a beacon.

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Oh yeah, this one's a lot more obvious.

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So between these two, this one was a pretty substantial one.

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We found both of them within just a couple minutes. This is a lot like the video Adam Savage

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did with this thing, hey? Two cool people can have the same cool idea

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at the same time. Adam Savage and ElectroBoom.

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And also me, just slower. I wanna show you guys,

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separate from the video mode, you can put it in leak Q mode.

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This allows you to take a picture of a leak,

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then according to your settings. So gas price, compression energy cost,

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as well as your currency, it will tell you how much that leak

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is gonna cost you a year. I had no idea that just a little air leak

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could cost $45 a year. So replacing the fitting is a no-brainer.

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That assumes it's running all year. I mean, it is running all year.

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We never turn it off. Like that's the whole thing with a leak. It's like a faucet, right?

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Like every once in a while, drip will waste like more gallons in a month

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than you could possibly fathom. Now, obviously, if the only gases you're working with

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are compressed air, it would take a little while for an investment like this

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to pay for itself. But in certain industries, this could be worth its weight in gold in cost savings.

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Now, while the workshop team gets those fittings sorted out, I'm gonna go see what else this thing can do.

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The magic of this device is really in its algorithm and precise calibration.

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The hardware itself is pretty simple. This array of 64 microphones

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is arranged in a logarithmic spiral to capture sound,

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and it uses beamforming to determine the source of the sound.

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Then it overlays that on the camera image as what Fluke calls a sound map.

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In the default mode, a sound map looks an awful lot like a heat map.

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All of this is possible because the microphones are all in known locations relative to both each other

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as well as to the camera right in the center. So sound hits the array and with a little bit of maths,

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the source can be determined by analyzing the reception delays.

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There are some limitations though. It's microphones pick up sound between two kilohertz

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and 100 kilohertz, which is well above the range of human hearing.

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So if you wanted to find something like a small liquid leak,

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say in our water cooling loop here, the frequency of a drip drip drip

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might actually be too low for the Fluke to pick up.

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Fortunately, we have an idea for that. Why not turn our liquid leak into

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an air leak? All we need to do is pressurize our loop.

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Well, that was easy. Oh, you put a hole in the tube.

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Usually the leaks are a lot smaller than that in these water cooling systems.

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I kind of wanna know if it can handle a much smaller leak like an O-ring issue or something.

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Every once in a while, especially on hard line fittings, these O-rings will go missing

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and the system can look like it's all sealed up, but when that drip gets on the back of your GPU,

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you're gonna have a pretty bad time. Put this up in the blue zone.

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You can see, even though there's no O-ring in there, it's sealed right now,

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but let's see if our Fluke can pick it up. Oh, dude.

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Easy. And that is a much, much smaller leak.

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What a trouble saver that would be. Now it is worth noting that our brilliant strategy

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of just emptying the loop and pumping it up

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isn't gonna work in every situation. Clean rooms, for instance,

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need to maintain strict control of airborne contaminants.

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And one of the ways that they do this is by building them to be fairly airtight

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and to maintain positive pressure inside, not a ton of pressure,

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cause like humans need to work in there, but some pressure.

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So how would they track down then a low pressure leak?

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Turns out the answer is Fluke's Beacon. This little device emits sound at 40,000 Hertz,

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well beyond what would bother any human. You just pop it into your system, seal it up,

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tune it to 40,000 Hertz, and theoretically we should be able to find our leak.

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I can definitely detect it through the acrylic now, but our system may be too complex

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for such a short wavelength to travel through like that.

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It's probably just because this knows there's sound coming from here or somewhere off the side,

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and so it's not gonna pick up the same frequency somewhere else. Hold it up over there then.

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Oh, dude, bingo. You know what, this would be a great opportunity

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to check the multiple source feature here. Ooh, yeah.

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So in acoustics, we can click multiple sources,

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and then, oh, dude, that's so cool.

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It'll show the different levels, however, those still totally overpower it.

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Really? Yeah, it really doesn't care about this leak unless it's the only one on screen.

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That's so funny. Very interesting.

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Wonder what else we could use this for? A really cool application for acoustic imagers

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is identifying problems with transmission towers at a distance, say, from the ground.

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It apparently works at up to 120 meters, or 393 feet,

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and can be used to detect partial discharge or arcing,

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the sort of thing that could lead to a forest fire. Now, we don't have anything like that to test,

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but we do have some whiny electronics like this GPU

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that has some coil wine. Now, coil wine isn't dangerous like those transmission tower problems.

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It's just vibrations in board components,

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specifically the coils, as electricity passes through. It's just, it can be pretty flipping annoying.

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Now, you can see that I'm not picking anything up right now. That's because this GPU isn't under load.

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Let's just plug in our keyboard using a handy-dandy TrueSpec cable from lttstore.com

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and fire up a GPU-intensive application.

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There it is, but where is it coming from specifically?

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There's a hotspot right where the 12 volt two by six

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comes into the back of the board. Yep, it's right across the back of the card

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where all the VRMs would be. Doesn't really help us solve the problem, but now we know.

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Actually, I had another situation very recently where coil wine was driving me absolutely nuts.

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I used these USB fiber optic docks

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in order to have my system downstairs, but my monitor and all of my peripherals upstairs.

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I was hearing this like high-pitched, almost like a CRT TV in the next room.

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Why? Now I was like, can anyone else hear that? Where is that coming from? Everyone's looking at me like I'm crazy.

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I'm having trouble getting it to go lower. Change the decibels from automatic to manual.

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It's trouble-loat when you get into the low frequencies because if you talk, you can actually see it.

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Exactly, when it's something that you can hear, like coil wine, it's always gonna be

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in the frequency that we can hear, so it can be a little bit of trouble.

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Right at like 10,000 Hertz.

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That's not even that high-pitched. Why couldn't anybody else hear this? It was driving me freaking nuts.

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Everyone can hear 10,000 Hertz, right? Some with hearing loss or significant age-related

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hearing decline might struggle to detect it. So you shouldn't have had any problems.

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Listen, listen. It's really cool how adjusting the frequency band,

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as well as the sensitivity, can really help you dial it in

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to detect particular things. Of course, your next question is probably,

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but what can I do about coil wine Linus? Some people have reported success

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putting schmoo over these vibrating components, but your mileage, not to mention your warranty,

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may vary. Is this kind of analysis a practical application for such an expensive device?

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Yeah, probably not, but there are more affordable options

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for this sort of thing. The Fluke II 500 is about eight and a half thousand dollars,

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but is just limited to the leak Q functionality

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that we showed you guys earlier with a more limited frequency band.

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Our II 915 has some added functions like mech Q,

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which detects things like a faulty bearing in an assembly line to help identify and fix problems

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during planned downtime, rather than when they just come up unexpectedly.

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But if you want to go even cheaper, you totally can. Other options are out there,

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and there are even open source acoustic imagers. The Cessenta, a modular system, looks like a standout.

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Of course, that sort of thing means that the calibration is entirely up to the user.

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If you're a business fan, you might not want to deal with that. All right, do you think they're done

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with the fixes in the shop? How'd all the fixes go? We're thinking the regulator was leaking.

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It may have been the hose, but we swapped both out. I wanted to replace the hoses anyway.

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The connection before was questionable at best. Tore the regulator down, rebuilt it, and no leaks at all.

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Sometimes you just have to take it apart and put it back together.

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This one was a little bit different. I knew that there was a leak in here because this wasn't tight enough,

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but I discovered that there was also an O-ring missing in her fasteners.

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Just completely missing? Yeah, I was actually quite surprised

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that it wasn't leaking worse than it was, but we ended up getting it put back in

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and now it's good and tight. So that was never in there?

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No. The whole time. Yeah.

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So it was only the two leaks? That was it? Well then, what is this that I'm picking up right now?

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Oh, I knew it. It's another segue to our sponsor.

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If you guys enjoyed this video, why not check out the one we did on a Caterpillar branded smartphone

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that has a FLIR thermal camera built into it? That was pretty cool.