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Foolish purchases of the age
Oct. 13th, 2013 08:36 pmA little while ago, I bought a thermal-infra-red camera. It was quite expensive, and I was not entirely sure what to do with it.
I was able to take surprisingly unflattering pictures of my friends, some of whom had cold fingers, were handling oddly-shaped insulating objects, or were drinking cold cider:
Normal spectacle lenses are good mirrors for thermal-IR, so everyone appears to be wearing Latin-American-dictator sunglasses indoors.
I could determine the existence of the moon, that my bicycle had not been stolen, and that the houses opposite had had their roofs insulated:
I could observe that black clothes left to dry in an unventilated conservatory in midsummer get really quite hot, that the hot-water pump in my airing-cupboard was connected to a well-insulated tank by poorly-insulated piping, that the microwave melted chocolate very irregularly, and that the USB-to-ethernet chip on my ODROID-X devboard was getting rather hot (see the PCB shot in visible light)
In addition, I could determine where on the rug I had been standing, deduce that at some point in the night my garden contained at least one cat, and conclude that the ventilator in the corner of my living room was letting cold air in.
You can also deduce by looking at the video feed from the camera that glass windows and shiny metal objects are reflective in the infra-red, but it's a bit hard to take a photo to show that.
I would really appreciate interesting ideas of other things to photograph in the ten-micron band; my house doesn't seem to have any particularly exciting opportunities for insulation, but if anyone has a dwelling with inexplicable cold spots or a machine with inexplicable hot spots, I can at least document them in exchange for a small amount of polite conversation. I'm wondering whether there is interest to be had in the depths of the Fens on a cold November night, but would rather not do that alone.
I am not entirely sure how happy this device is to be taken across international borders - it's the 9Hz version, so was exportable from the US to the EU and is happy within the EU, but I suspect taking it to India or China would attract quite the wrong kind of attention from customs.
I was able to take surprisingly unflattering pictures of my friends, some of whom had cold fingers, were handling oddly-shaped insulating objects, or were drinking cold cider:
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 |
 |
 |
 |
Normal spectacle lenses are good mirrors for thermal-IR, so everyone appears to be wearing Latin-American-dictator sunglasses indoors.
I could determine the existence of the moon, that my bicycle had not been stolen, and that the houses opposite had had their roofs insulated:
 |
 |
 |
I could observe that black clothes left to dry in an unventilated conservatory in midsummer get really quite hot, that the hot-water pump in my airing-cupboard was connected to a well-insulated tank by poorly-insulated piping, that the microwave melted chocolate very irregularly, and that the USB-to-ethernet chip on my ODROID-X devboard was getting rather hot (see the PCB shot in visible light)
 |
 |
 |
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In addition, I could determine where on the rug I had been standing, deduce that at some point in the night my garden contained at least one cat, and conclude that the ventilator in the corner of my living room was letting cold air in.
 |
 |
 |
You can also deduce by looking at the video feed from the camera that glass windows and shiny metal objects are reflective in the infra-red, but it's a bit hard to take a photo to show that.
I would really appreciate interesting ideas of other things to photograph in the ten-micron band; my house doesn't seem to have any particularly exciting opportunities for insulation, but if anyone has a dwelling with inexplicable cold spots or a machine with inexplicable hot spots, I can at least document them in exchange for a small amount of polite conversation. I'm wondering whether there is interest to be had in the depths of the Fens on a cold November night, but would rather not do that alone.
I am not entirely sure how happy this device is to be taken across international borders - it's the 9Hz version, so was exportable from the US to the EU and is happy within the EU, but I suspect taking it to India or China would attract quite the wrong kind of attention from customs.
