This is a single pixel infa-red camera. Normally, IR cameras are in the range 4,000 -- 40,000 dollars. This camera costs ~400 dollars, and takes a not long (unknown) time to capture an image. Examples will be shown on this page at a later date.
This project is based off the instructions at cheap-thermocam.tk. These instructions aren't very good, and many of the links are dead. Since I find that frustrating, some better instructions are below.
I started off with the Arduino, but it didn't even make enough RAM to hold the entire image. I moved to the RPi, which has 250,000x the RAM. I also moved to more accurate motors, as the servos were horribly inaccurate.
The parts list for this project:
Part | Number | Total Price |
---|---|---|
RPi | 1 | 35 |
IR sensor | 1 | 35 |
Driver boards | 2 | 200 |
Stepper motors | 2 | 70 |
Total | 340 |
Also, the comments in the project on the RPi (temp.rpi/IRcamera
) are
wonderfully accurate and complete. I hate bad documentation, and am trying to
write good docs.
- Look at the comments at the top of
IRcamera.c
(intemp.rpi/IRcamera
as of 2013-7-24) to determine where to wire SDA/SCK/Vdd/GND, and where those pins are on the IR sensor. - Make a motor controller that allows the motor to rotate in two dimensions. I
had our department's machine shop make ours. On the final camera, the sensor
will go on the disk on the upper motor.
To run a cheap version of the thermocam, use (possibly with some modification)
IRcamera.ino
in the main folder. For parts, get
- IR Sensor
- Arduino Uno R3
- SD card and SD card shield
- Pan tilt brackets
- Servos
- breadboard, wires, superglue, etc (you probably have it already)
This Arduino writes images to the SD card in the simplest RGB format available (PPM). To do that, you'll need a good PPM viewer. For the Mac, look at Xee (I downloaded it from here, and I didn't get a license).
- Look in the comments of
IRcamera.ino
for the directions.
I'm writing down all the painfully hard to resolve bugs I find so I don't have to go through the whole process of figuring it out again.
I could SSH into the RPi simply by joining the University's network (the unprotected one) and sharing my internet via a USB-ethernet cable I bought.