HOT new tech? - FLIR ONE Thermal Camera
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,480 words · ~7 min read
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do I make you hot well there's only one way to find
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out for sure a thermal camera meet the
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one from Fleer an affordable thermal
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camera module that Clips to the bottom of your
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smartphone Mass drop is currently featuring The MSI GTX 1080 armor 8G
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learn more at the link in the video description let's start with one of my
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biggest complaints about the Fleer 1 in spite of the name there are actually two
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of them I mean I understand the reason one is for Apple devices with a
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lightning connector and the other is for Android devices with a micr USB
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connector but if there was a way to equip the Fleer 2 or whatever a
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successor ended up being called with swappable interfaces without
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compromising the admittedly very strong connectors
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I think that would go a long way towards improving the versatility and future
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proofness of these devices an important
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consideration when you factor in that even an affordable mobile accessory
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version of fle technology is going to run you $250
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us let's take a closer look then at the
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one both versions look almost the same
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and share the same internals and same basic mode of operation so we'll be
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mostly treating them as one for the rest of the video here the outer shell is
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plastic but fairly confidence inspiring
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it's not rated for water or dust resistance but it seems like it could
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survive a drop or two on the right is a status LED equipped power button so you
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can tell when it's booting up versus fully powered on and ready to engage
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with the phone app on the left is a battery charge indicator and a micro USB
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charging port so yes that means the Fleer 1 uses a 350 Mah internal battery
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in does not charge off of the device it's attached to convenient in some ways
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but kind of a drag in others and finally at the front are the twin cameras the
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stars of the show I did say twin but I should probably clarify that I mean
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fraternal twins in this case because they are absolutely nothing alike one of
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them is for capturing infrared light a thermal camera and the other is for
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capturing visible light a well camera
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camera the thermal camera uses fleer's
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leptin an astonishingly small and lowcost longwave infrared sensor to
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generate 80x 60 pixel thermal images
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that are accurate to within. 1° C from a
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range ofus 20 all the way up to 120°
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that's -4 to 248 Fahrenheit for our American viewers the visible camera is
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less impressive it's a 640x 480 yeah VGA
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air and that's pretty much all we know about
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it other than the reason that the Fleer one even has one without getting too
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deep into this resolution is a word that gets frequently misused it means how
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much detail can be resolved from an
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image so a film picture also has a
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resolution even if you can't count the
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pixels so let's fire up the app and just take a picture here so the visible
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camera is actually where it seems like
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the advertised effective resolution of 160x 120 comes from thanks to a
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technique called MSX blending that in a
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nutshell captures a visible light picture then strips out everything but
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textures and edges and overlays the thermal image with the ability to peek
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behind it at the original normal capture as needed for easy diagnosis of whatever
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it is that you're looking at an HVAC system a problematic circuit or that
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freaking cat that's trying to avoid being taken to the vet Fleer claims this
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technique allows the image to have five times the detail a figure that they may
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have pulled out of their butts for all I can tell but whether it's four or five
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or six times it clearly works pretty darn well because the thermal image
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alone is much more difficult to read especially for a lay person like me and
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on top of still image capture it actually supports video Panorama and
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even timelapse capture which is actually a stroke of Genius for diagnosing
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problems that might develop slowly or be related to the time of
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day which is cool lus but uh why should
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I care what are these things even for and why the hell do you need one well
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for the first one I don't know about you but I care because they're just pretty
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freaking cool as for practical uses there are actually many thermal imagers
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like so many things were actually developed for military use allowing
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Personnel to detect heat signatures engine exhaust operating machinery and
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even people during the Korean War but today their applications range from
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medical use ever seen those cameras and arrivals at the international airport
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they're checking to see if you have a fever and you're going to spread disease
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to building optimization to check the effectiveness of insulation to law
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enforcement night vision goggles anyone to storm tracking to Home Inspection to
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you're watching you name it and what we've been enjoying is the way that
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suddenly a thermal camera allows us to validate manufacturer claims like
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oneplus's assertion that their quick charging technique keeps the phone
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running cooler than competing qualcom Quick Charge 3.0 and razors claim that
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the new blade 14 2016 Edition runs much
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cooler than last year's model neat right
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yeah I guess lonus but uh does this make the existence of higher end ones like
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the Fleer E60 which is like a $7,000
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camera that you were showing off on Instagram a little while ago uh
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Superfluous great question but no I don't think so the app is surprisingly
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stable and functional but higher end models have features that are a must for
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industrial use swappable batteries SD recording rugged housing and the ability
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to operate without a phone attached to name a few and the fler one is not
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perfect we ran into compatibility issues for example with the iPhone SE and on
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the Android side of things the onward March towards USB type-c standardization
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reveals the problem with that future proofness issue that I alluded to before
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we actually tried using uh type c to
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microe adapter with the HTC 10 but we
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didn't have any luck getting it to work though your mileage may vary bottom line
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though it's not perfect and hopefully
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resolution durab and compatibility rise as cost continues to lower but if you
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need an affordable thermal camera for some reason then the Fleer one which
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Fleer is leaving with us to enrich our future reviews by the way which is
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awesome will likely be as welcome in addition to your diagnostic Arsenal as
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it is to ours speaking of being a welcome
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Linked In the video description so thanks for watching guys
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