LittleScoobyMaster
Getting the hang of it
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How many decades until this tech is available to us for an average price of $300? (stationary camera without PTZ)
Thermal Tech Time Frame
- Thread starter LittleScoobyMaster
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Well there was one, just not at quality levels like in the video above, that have been available to huge corporations and governments for decades. The FLIR TCX series. It is actually made by Dahua but unfortunately its sensor isn't very good. Super-low resolution and kind of glitchy. To add insult to injury they neutered the image processing algorithms for this series so you are stuck with just a white-is-hot monochromatic color palette with no adjustment options. So this camera series got few customer reviews and few of those were favorable. It is now discontinued and no longer available at the price I bought one for a couple years ago.
It really does seem like thermal camera tech is decades behind normal camera tech. The manufacturing of thermal sensors is very delicate. A while ago I was reading about how the pixel structure actually has to be 3-dimensional. They also involve more expensive and hazardous materials, and the pixels have to be physically much larger than pixels on a visible-light camera so the resolutions are lower and costs are higher. And then there is the matter of lenses. Normal cheap glass can't be used because it is mostly opaque to the IR bands detected by thermal camera sensors. Then of course there are export restrictions which doesn't help matters.
Dahua has a thermal + 2MP starlight hybrid, almost a year old now, but as far as I can tell the price is in the ballpark of $700 and availability is utterly terrible. I haven't been able to get my hands on one, and I'm not sure I would anyway for $700.
Unfortunately the way consumer tech is going, the next <$700 security camera employing a thermal imager is probably going to be some phone-and-cloud-centered piece of wifi garbage. I've been hoping Seek Thermal would make an IP camera, but its been years now and they haven't shown any interest yet. I'm worried if they do make one with PoE and outdoor ratings they will pad the price so it is only affordable to successful businesses.
It really does seem like thermal camera tech is decades behind normal camera tech. The manufacturing of thermal sensors is very delicate. A while ago I was reading about how the pixel structure actually has to be 3-dimensional. They also involve more expensive and hazardous materials, and the pixels have to be physically much larger than pixels on a visible-light camera so the resolutions are lower and costs are higher. And then there is the matter of lenses. Normal cheap glass can't be used because it is mostly opaque to the IR bands detected by thermal camera sensors. Then of course there are export restrictions which doesn't help matters.
Dahua has a thermal + 2MP starlight hybrid, almost a year old now, but as far as I can tell the price is in the ballpark of $700 and availability is utterly terrible. I haven't been able to get my hands on one, and I'm not sure I would anyway for $700.
Unfortunately the way consumer tech is going, the next <$700 security camera employing a thermal imager is probably going to be some phone-and-cloud-centered piece of wifi garbage. I've been hoping Seek Thermal would make an IP camera, but its been years now and they haven't shown any interest yet. I'm worried if they do make one with PoE and outdoor ratings they will pad the price so it is only affordable to successful businesses.