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Comment by raziel2701 | Hacker News Reader

This was a common mechanic in the splinter cell games, you'd wait for a guard to go through a door with a keypad and you'd put on your thermal vision goggles to find the 4 numbers. I guess that now that thermal cameras are becoming more ubiquitous this has jumped closer to reality. Back then I can't imagine there were thermal cameras that were small and cheap. Nowadays you can get a flir lens for your phone at about $200 - $300 if I recall correctly.

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Cat Phones (yes, Caterpillar Tractor) offered the first phone with an IR imager. They intended this for industry and construction, where you're sometimes looking for things that are overheating, or heat leaks. It combines the visual and IR images, so you can see the outlines of what you're looking at. Their customer base has a real use case for this feature.

Like other Cat phones, but unlike the USB-port devices, it's not fragile.[2]

[1] http://www.catphones.com/en-us/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVPku-xItv8

I used a CAT phone for hiking for a while and at first I was quite impressed by the sturdiness (dropped it on rocks multiple meters a couple of times). But there are some design flaws where the connectors are just covered by plastic plugs that leak water after a while and its not waterproof anymore. Would not buy one again.

Yep, $250 for the FLIR One [1] or Seek Compact [2].

FLIR has a new version [3] launching Q2 for $200.

[1] http://www.flir.com/flirone/ios-android/

[2] http://www.thermal.com/products/compact/

[3] http://www.flir.com/flirone/products/?id=81752

These things are really cool, we use a standalone one in my office for thermal testing products. It's not just fingers on screens, you can see footprints from someone walking across the floor.

Very cool - any thoughts on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the FLIR vs Seek models?

No personal experience with either. But my quick internet impression: the FLIR's main advantage is that it has a second (higher resolution) visible light camera, which it uses to add an edge detail overlay to the image. The disadvantage is that it has its own battery and has to be recharged.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Battle-of-the-thermal-imaging...

The problem I had with the Seek model was that it connected to my phone via a Lightning connector, and there was no good way to ensure that connection remained solid. Dropped the thing the same day I got it, and it broke. Haven't tried one since.

It's also hard to use them if you have any kind of a case on your phone.

If I had one that worked via Bluetooth or Wifi, or was built into a phone case, or had a longer cable that I could route around my existing case, then I might give it another try.

Short of that, I'm looking forward to the standalone model.

FLIR's upcoming model looks like you can twist a knob to extend the lightning plug, so it should handle cases better than either of the existing ones.

Re: camera built into phone case, also worth mentioning that the very first version of the FLIR One was a camera integrated into an iPhone 5/5S case. The obvious downside of this is that if you replace your phone with a new model you can't use the camera anymore. This particular design may have a second lease on life if you go to an iPhone SE, but a lot more people moved to the 6/6S/7/7S which won't be compatible.

Standalone versions have been around for years with a really wide array of designs for different purposes (industrial, security, testing, most recently lightweight UAV cameras). For the standalone cameras you pay a bit more because it can't bum off the phone's screen, storage, input, and all that. The TG165 at $350 looks to be the low end unless I'm missing something. No way to browse their site by prices.

http://www.flir.com/instruments/tg165/

I'd love to have thermal camera on my smartphone. My application would be that when I come to a bakery, I would like to know which pastry was just baked and is still warm!

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