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Comment by devindotcom | Hacker News Reader

I took of pic of one in action last night:

Seemed pretty responsive. Good enough to capture the residual temperature from someone touching a table. Not pro level stuff obviously but worth exploring for basic thermal imaging applications it seemed to me.

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My shot from last night (a cup of hot tea): http://imgur.com/XQRD7fj

Should have thought of that, I was surrounded by hot and cold props and just let the dude hold it up. Ah well, it turned out all right.

But can this see through walls/vehicles like the IR binoculars in that Jackie Chan movie?

Looks like the thermal imaging resolution was about 30x45 pixels, based on some quick measurement in Photoshop. However, it's interesting to see how much higher the apparent resolution is thanks to the overlaid edges from the visual camera.

You can turn off the overlay if you want, it's only there when there's lots of visible light.

Good enough for seeing what PIN was typed on the atm machine?

Oh definitely. But ssshh

You mean, so you can 1) mug the cardholder, and 2) try all the 4x4 combinations (or 5x5 for mine), which I believe will get the card eaten after a small number of failures? Seems like it would be much useful for snooping pinpad door lock codes, which often don't seem to care how many errors you enter in a short period.

Good point. Real criminals attach an inconspicuous cam and a skimmer to the machine.

New advice: after typing PIN, place your palm over the buttons to heat them all evenly.

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