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Boron

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FWIW guys - I had a shock.
I bit the bullet and laid out ca $200 for a proper hand held IR camera with his res (not a widget you plug in the USB C of your phone. If your are doing serious work (detecting potential hot spots in cable joints and cct boards etc) then dont was money on Cheap Charlie toys when you need a tool IMHO.
So I fired up my unit and it all went well, then started scanning around the room first as you do.
Imagine my astonishment when it lit up on and adapted power block as used on a laptop. It was ca 55C real hand hot, not what I expected as the laptop was closed and asleep.

Yes on inspection it was a Cheap charlie type. I checked some other blocks and all rest were cool unremarkable.

So the take away is - the IR cam has justified its cost already as I would never likely have spotted this hot spot otherwise. Would be a fire risk? I wouldnt risk it - bin it.

I dont want to break rules here and push products but do your homework and look for IR res (not screen res) of 256x192.

It seems to me that in the Solar world with high currents etc its one of those must have test gear pieces now they are maybe 1/10 of price when they first came out few years back.

I will post some more info as I gain usage - IMHO you never knew you needed it till you used a semi pro one. AFAIK solar panel installers have these as standard to check those dodgy MC4s

Thats my 2c
 
Boron said:
FWIW guys - I had a shock.
I bit the bullet and laid out ca $200 for a proper hand held IR camera with his res (not a widget you plug in the USB C of your phone. If your are doing serious work (detecting potential hot spots in cable joints and cct boards etc) then dont was money on Cheap Charlie toys when you need a tool IMHO.
So I fired up my unit and it all went well, then started scanning around the room first as you do.
Imagine my astonishment when it lit up on and adapted power block as used on a laptop. It was ca 55C real hand hot, not what I expected as the laptop was closed and asleep.

Yes on inspection it was a Cheap charlie type. I checked some other blocks and all rest were cool unremarkable.

So the take away is - the IR cam has justified its cost already as I would never likely have spotted this hot spot otherwise. Would be a fire risk? I wouldnt risk it - bin it.

I dont want to break rules here and push products but do your homework and look for IR res (not screen res) of 256x192.

It seems to me that in the Solar world with high currents etc its one of those must have test gear pieces now they are maybe 1/10 of price when they first came out few years back.

I will post some more info as I gain usage - IMHO you never knew you needed it till you used a semi pro one. AFAIK solar panel installers have these as standard to check those dodgy MC4s

Thats my 2c
Click to expand...

My IR criteria has always been:

320x240 actual MINIMUM sensor resolution
Full manual override of temperature span and range ("auto" on almost every kind of equipment I have had to use does not let a user exploit the full abilities of the gear - if you wanna get the "barely there" temp. differences, you gotta do it yourself)
 
I’d like to hear about brands and models. It’s good to check in on this topic once in a while to see if I can afford it yet.
 
Well, my first camera 20 years ago was a FLIR T-360 which set me back $12K. Business equipment so I made that money back many times over. Current imager is a FLIR E8-XT:

Support for FLIR E8-XT - Discontinued | Teledyne FLIR

Get support for FLIR E8-XT. Find contact information, downloads, and other resources.
www.flir.com www.flir.com

Discontinued, apparently, but still available for around $2500. Same sensor resolution but lacking a few bells and whistles the 360 had, like interchangeable lenses. Turned out that I very rarely even used that feature so I don't miss it.

It doesn't record video directly, but I can get that to happen by using a USB video capture cord connected to the USB port of the E8 and an Android tablet running a UVC video cap app. $35 for the cord.

I use these several times a week for various work things so the cost of a good camera isn't really a factor for me. If you're just gonna use it for personal use, different story, of course.

Couple images attached. The one of the PCB is the guts of a Blue Sky SB3024 CC that had a blown FET on the LVD output that I replaced. Other one is a Costco GC-2 battery with a hydrogen bubble inside that caused spot overheating as it had displaced the liquid electrolyte. Thumping the GC-2 made it go away.



FLIR0050.jpgFLIR0093.jpg
 
Thnx for that - pro IR cams few years back were $$$$$. Will post some pix on mine as soon as I get more familiar with the technique. What gets me (after finding a potential fire risk on hot laptop psu bloc), is that you would never know you needed one till now - as an amateur that is. In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
 
42OhmsPA said:
Here's my 2 cents.
Click to expand...
In short, a decent IR cam is an essential inspection tool - pre installation IMHO. Dont want to faffa about on the roof with faulty panel before you even start.

Im sure that installers in the states have a much higher degree of integrity - given the risk of serious litigation. Here in UK we are way too lax and (from personal experience) any tradesman style as a roofer - is from the lowest rung of building industry along with drive tarmac cowboys etc.

OZ guys have a lot of experience with roof panels - they have shallow pitches and bungalows that helps - are their installers licensed? You need a permit to operate from an EE inspector IIRR chug a lug
 
Boron said:
Thnx for that - pro IR cams few years back were $$$$$. Will post some pix on mine as soon as I get more familiar with the technique. What gets me (after finding a potential fire risk on hot laptop psu bloc), is that you would never know you needed one till now - as an amateur that is. In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
Click to expand...
Yep, I'm constantly surprised about the things I see with IR while I am looking for what I am getting paid to look for.

Point your imager at a GFCI duplex outlet.
 
Boron said:
In short, a decent IR cam is an essential inspection tool - pre installation IMHO. Dont want to faffa about on the roof with faulty panel before you even start.
Click to expand...
Agreed - saved me from potential disaster
Boron said:
Im sure that installers in the states have a much higher degree of integrity - given the risk of serious litigation.
Click to expand...
It hurts a bit saying it but I don't completely agree. Integrity and accountability is hard to find these days.
Boron said:
Here in UK we are way too lax and (from personal experience) any tradesman style as a roofer - is from the lowest rung of building industry along with drive tarmac cowboys etc.

OZ guys have a lot of experience with roof panels - they have shallow pitches and bungalows that helps - are their installers licensed? You need a permit to operate from an EE inspector IIRR chug a lug
Click to expand...
Chug-a-lug
 
@42OhmsPA
Holy schwepps batman - thats like some of the armchair RV puffers you get here giving the good ole boy treatment to Solar Energy systems Hornswagglingtoadlickers

I sincerely commend the AYBC who have decades of practical experience in battery micro grid system https://panbo.com/abyc-ratifies-e-13-their-first-lithium-battery-standard/. You cant fool around afloat, its life threatening. Fire aboard is your worst nightmare.
 
I have a Flir E8that I bought when I was working as a contractor. Not cheap but with higher resolution its a great rig.

Apparently, the sensors are like CPUs, when they are fabricated, some are better than others for sensitivity. The manufacturer sorts them out and uses the better ones in the higher rated cameras. At one point when I bought mine, there were a couple of folks out there that were buying the lower cost lower resolution units and doing the equivalent of "overclocking" a CPU. They would go into the software and change the resolution so the unit ran at a higher resolution than it came from the factory. There was one warning to never update the software. I used mine for work so dint want to risk it but it was a big savings. My guess is it would work 95% of the time but for how long, is anyone guess.
 
peakbagger said:
I have a Flir E8that I bought when I was working as a contractor. Not cheap but with higher resolution its a great rig.

Apparently, the sensors are like CPUs, when they are fabricated, some are better than others for sensitivity. The manufacturer sorts them out and uses the better ones in the higher rated cameras. At one point when I bought mine, there were a couple of folks out there that were buying the lower cost lower resolution units and doing the equivalent of "overclocking" a CPU. They would go into the software and change the resolution so the unit ran at a higher resolution than it came from the factory. There was one warning to never update the software. I used mine for work so dint want to risk it but it was a big savings. My guess is it would work 95% of the time but for how long, is anyone guess.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I read up on this. It was a method to save a few hundred $$$ by buying the "next step down" E series which was advertised as 160x120 (I think) by flashing the software from an E8 or equivalent to it.

It failed often enough, leaving the user with a "bricked" imager, that I wouldn't do it...
 
Every time I check into these phone based things I get annoyed.

Some reviews indicate that they require access to all your photos to operate. Dumb.
 
Excessive permission request with mobile applications is unfortunately common. Sometimes intentionally by design on developer side and sometimes due to lack of feature availability on operating system side. Ideally there's an "add to library only" option instead of "read/write everything"
 
v_green57 said:
Yeah, I read up on this. It was a method to save a few hundred $$$ by buying the "next step down" E series which was advertised as 160x120 (I think) by flashing the software from an E8 or equivalent to it.

It failed often enough, leaving the user with a "bricked" imager, that I wouldn't do it...
Click to expand...
Sensors a binned for performance (NEdT) but a lot of times the differences between models are just software features (auto vs manual AGC, different LUTs), better pixel operability specs (number of bad pixels and clusters allowed). The MSX feature is awesome on the FLIR models though, definitely get one with that feature.
 
I had to replace an old one and got the Flir C5, works well for all my hvac usage.

D7B0393A-7077-4D47-85F0-6BB7F96F9E85.jpeg5CAD5CB4-A901-4010-8F58-D1622EDBB0A9.jpeg
 
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