Wednesday, January 8, 2014

FLIR One adds thermal vision to the iPhone


Smartphone cameras have improved greatly over the past couple of years, but there's always room for improvement. While most manufacturers struggle for higher quality low-light photos and videos, FLIR specializes in a completely different area: thermal vision. And now it aims to make it more affordable than ever with its FLIR One for the iPhone.

Thermal cameras shows us an invisible world around us, where instead of "light" you see "heat". You might have seen such images already in military videos/movies, or being used by law enforcement, firefighters, or even building inspectors looking for heat/cold leaks in buildings and homes. It's a great tool, but until now the cheapest FLIR thermal cameras were still too expensive for most people - upwards of $1000 - but things might be about to change.


The FLIR One adds a thermal camera to an iPhone via a plug-in case and it will cost "just" $350, making far more affordable than anything else. In fact, the FLIR One uses not one, but two cameras: besides the thermal camera you also get a regular camera, allowing you to more easily "see" what you're really looking at, with the thermal "layer" on top (sometimes, just looking at a thermal image isn't enough to figure things out.)

The only drawback is that, for now, it's an iPhone 5/5S only case. FLIR is working on other FLIR One versions that will work with Android phones and be more "generic" (keep in mind that the next iPhone will probably have a different design, and you won't be able to keep using this FLIR One version with it). But other than that... I think this will be a big step in order to make thermal imaging more affordable and accessible to the general public.


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