Sort of like an 18% grey card for IR, neat idea.

Is this a good beginner model for just getting into IR?

@@steverone7623 depends on what you’re using it for. It is low cost and will get you familiar with the technology but has limitations. Personally, I would not use it professionally. It has a fixed focus. Resolution is low and insufficient for any work at a distance more than a few feet away where you need to discern temperature between multiple, closely spaced components. Thermal sensitivity on low end cameras is not good. If you want to learn about thermal imaging , thermal camera Las and basic thermal dynamics, take a course with infraspection institute. A level one course teaches you the basics of thermal imaging and how to take a good quantitative image. If you are considering using thermal imaging professionally, a level 1 certification is the first step.

"tinfoil" ? So common and disposable now ? Does this have the same properties as aluminum Foil ? alloy foil ? copper foil ?

@@metanoian965 for reasons I don’t know well enough to relate, aluminum foil is often colloquially called “tinfoil”. I believe that’s all that’s happening here.

As an engineer, you clearly should be watching Mikes Electric Stuff channel in addition to Matthias - he did a video on the P2 Pro thermal camera back in November, and years ago he was the one that figured out how to hack the low end flir handheld cameras to the higher model ones with software (because the low end ones were just software restricted in resolution and frame rate, but all models were exactly the same hardware).

Welcome to youtube my early fren

Not sure about pennies on the dollar cuz his channel size they would be paying 50k a pop, minimum, plus he earns royalties thru amazon affiliate

The garbage bag was impressive indeed!

I had a lot of fun discovering water pipes in the wall as well as the floor heating. Outside of the house was energy efficiency horror story though, as all the balconies glowed a nice bright red in the otherwise freezing weather.

(nice)

Totally! I now want to experiment with boiling water over ice cubes and stuff like that. :D

all you need is a cup of room temp water. aim the camera at it and stick a few fingers in there.

Matthias has addressed sponsorships before, and really makes a point of being honest and independent in his reviews. Personally I would trust a Matthias review far more than most KZfaqrs; hopefully marketing teams realize the value of that!

The UNI-T UTi260B is equivalent to the Topdon TC005 (including second visible light camera) but priced like the TC004 (only IR camera) and it's widely available.

One of the hardest things when insulating a traditional house is preventing thermal bridging of the framing. Basically you have to continuously insulate the outside of the house, and your better off leaving the framing exposed or uninsulated.

USB itself is always backwards compatible protocol wise, and every type of USB cable with whatever connector you want and in whatever orientation you want imaginable is available pretty cheaply. I'd be a lot more worried about some proprietary BS connector light every connector Apple uses. On a whim they can decide to make the protocol not backwards compatible (or even block specific devices as every device has to have the stupid apple security chip in it), as well as change the physical connector and not authorize people to make cables to go between the different connectors (again, because every cable has a chip in it that needs Apple's blessing). I recently bought a InfiRay P2 pro thermal camera - it's USB-C and I hope to be able to use it for a long time into the future with adapters and whatever. It also works out of the box as a webcam in windows and linux with no special drivers required, but only gives you the raw thermal image (no measurements / calibrations etc etc as that's all software based)

The one cool feature of the P2 Pro that this doesn't have is a little magnetic clip on macro lens, which makes it very useful for doing circuit board repair. Mikes Electric Stuff did a video about them a while ago, and when he did the video they had a black friday sale too, so I got it for a pretty good price as well!

@@gorak9000 While USB-C is clearly going to be around for the foreseeable future - whether phones start to do away with a port all together in preference for wireless only charging is likely scenario eventually. Apple undoubtedly going to lead the charge here. And more concerningly, FLIR will eventually stop supporting this first gen device in software, and or stop supporting the software on modern OSes. That's my bigger concern than USB not being compatible.

Hopefully it keeps working. Mine died last week. They are notorious for the logic board failing due to poor BGA solder joints, can in theory be repaired but requires BGA reballing most of the time. I transferred the Lepton 3.0 thermal core from mine into the tCam kit on GroupGets (basically a build your own thermal camera kit, sensor not included) but didn't realize how limited it would be, the Lepton 3.0 doesn't do radiometric imaging on its own, it relies on a separate shutter thermal sensor and software calibration in the Flir One, so the tCam only gives the pretty images but no temp data. The newer Lepton 3.5 thermal core supports radiometry built in (I think the main difference is it has a built in shutter/housing temp sensor so doesn't need the corrections/calibration done externally) and does give all the temp info on the tCam. In theory should be possible to add thermal sensor and do calibration in software to enable temp display on 3.0 (just enabling temp display without that gives wacky results all over the place) but not sure that is a project I want to tackle. Kind of just wish I bought one of these TC004 instead, good res and framerate for the price compared to the competition, the tCam + a Lepton 3.5 costs more and is inferior in those specs (though way more flexible due to open source software/hardware + wifi connectivity.)

@@MikeKeeth Yeah, I already had one RMA for that issue and if it happens again now out of warranty, I'll was planning on using the Lepton sensor for fun in the tCam. But now with the proliferation of cheap, non-ITAR devices with better specs all around, I'd have a hard time spending any more money on FLIR. I'll cross that bridge when/if it happens, but something like this is definitely on my radar.

Those export restrictions aren't a problem if it's made in china!

Yes, there's a new crop of IR camera manufacturers that have popped up in china. There's no longer a restriction on resolution or frame rate, as long as the camera isn't manufactured in the US, putting the US manufacturers at a severe disadvantage now. How sweet it is when stupid laws come back to bite the people they were designed to give an advantage to! I recently got an InfiRay P2 Pro (which this might actually be using the same IR camera core), and it's higher res, not frame rate restricted, and WAY cheaper than anything from any US manufacturer.

@@matthiasrandomstuff2221thanks for replying. Had no idea export restrictions existed on this

I have a HTI 301 small usbc android camera, excellent framer ate and resolution. But the real kicker is the software! It's called thermviewer. Way more features than what came with the unit.

@@RDhali That'd explain why they're still pretty expensive. $250+ for a decent brand.

not the look I'm going for!

any chance they want a sponsored video?