Where innovation is concerned, there are other ways to achieve higher resolution than the basic optical resolution of the microbolometer. I was hoping to see piezo electric driven sensor or lens based resolution enhancement coming out of China but it never happened
Innovation is the way forwards. It has been done before when higher resolution sensor arrays were prohibitively expensive.
In my humble opinion, the SEEK Thermal 'core' is a less than ideal basis on which to build decent thermal cameras. The SEEK Thermal Microbolometer and associated image processing needs to be heavily investigated to determine what needs to be done to 'tame' its bad behaviour. The FLIR Lepton 3 is also a relatively poor performer for anything more than very basic thermography or observation. A new thermal camera 'start-up' company should seriously consider looking to ULIS, or clones of ULIS sensors, for decent microbolometers and then build their own core around such. Chinese companies have been doing this for years but some have had quality control issues with the support electronics. Wuhan Guide immediately come to mind in my personal experience.
A 'start-up' thermal camera manufacturing company that bases its product range on a flawed core, like that of SEEK Thermal, will always suffer that disadvantage in the marketplace unless they find a way to improve the cores 'as supplied' performance or invent novel and effective niche market devices that do not require the best thermal imaging performance. Thermal camera based machinery monitoring where high Delta 'T' is present or intelligent fire detection systems come to mind. Then there is people counting and analysis for retail customers and intelligent intruder detection. IRISYS managed to do a lot with only simple 16 x 16 and 32 x 32 pixel thermal sensor arrays
It is just a case of deciding where an opportunity exists within the market and whether a budget COTS core like the FLIR Lepton of SEEK Thermal offerings are a cost effective and adequate proposition on which to build a solution.
As has already been stated, the market is starting to become flooded with low resolution to medium resolution thermal imaging solutions. They vary greatly in price and performance. Anyone wishing to compete in that market segment needs to either offer good performance at very low cost (hard to achieve at the moment) or the product needs to be novel in some respect that offers an advantage over the competition. Anything else is likely to get lost in the 'noise'
I have no objection or issue with what this company is trying to do. They are taking proven SEEK Thermal camera designs and looking to integrate the electronics into different formats and systems. The question must be whether what they are producing truly has a decent customer base or it will just be a novelty company, producing products that cause discussion on forums like this one but little else. Hobbyists have been re-casing and modifying COTS products for years in order to meet specific needs. That does not make those unique solutions particularly marketable though !
The OEM asked me to comment on their work, and I have decided to do that above. It is just my view on the situation and others will very likely have a different view.
Fraser
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