What about these dirty cheap 640x512 cores at Aliexpress?

[dmendesf]

Hi, my background first: EE with a passion for tearing things apart, understanding how they work, fixing/hacking/improving them. Bought an old E4 a long time ago (circa 2018), upgraded it to 320x240 and had a lot of fun. Then pandemics came, I was already bored by the 9FPS and suddenly the E4 was valued as more than the double the value I paid for it, so I sold it. After that bought a  ISC0901B0 hoping that OpenIRV would give me a better toy to play but nothing came from it since then (I know others published working examples of  ISC0901B0 modules but as far as I know nobody clearly published the "how to" bypass the CAN protection, so i´m stuck).

Now Aliexpress is littered with small cheap cores ranging from 256x192 to 640x512:

https://pt.aliexpress.com/item/1005007217173786.html

https://pt.aliexpress.com/item/1005007371147055.html

They have CVBS (analog video? this means NTSC/PAL ?) output, 25/50FPS, and seems to be used by drones (Can only imagine this has to do with the Ukraine war...). My questions:

Anybody bought one? How does it perform for general use? I´m mainly interested at looking for hotspots in PCBs (no need to really measure the temp, just know where to look for abnormal temps) and thinkering in general.

[zev]

You can get 640 DALI cores out of old COVID scanner cams for less, 2-500$. I have a pile. example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/395364654783

[Phil1977]

It´d be interesting to see the core of the core.

A 640x512 thermal imager may be very nice and for drone usage the CVBS output may be a choice. But for any other application a direct digital readout with clear addressability of all the pixels would probably be of higher value than the sensor resolution alone.

[Hazel]

We are a manufacturer of industrial cameras and we sell a lot of long wave infrared cameras. I looked at the link you posted and I don't understand why the price is so low.
Our 640*512 has many interfaces, one of them is analog video, means NTSC/PAL
As you can see, it does have a lot of applications for drones.

[dmendesf]

I'm also appaled. There are dozens of them. Some have digital output (even wifi) for about 50% more. Others have bigger lenses.

We are a manufacturer of industrial cameras and we sell a lot of long wave infrared cameras. I looked at the link you posted and I don't understand why the price is so low.
Our 640*512 has many interfaces, one of them is analog video, means NTSC/PAL
As you can see, it does have a lot of applications for drones.

[dmendesf]

Some of them, like 50% more expensive, have even wifi / hdmi output:


https://a.aliexpress.com/_mLNCs3K

It´d be interesting to see the core of the core.

A 640x512 thermal imager may be very nice and for drone usage the CVBS output may be a choice. But for any other application a direct digital readout with clear addressability of all the pixels would probably be of higher value than the sensor resolution alone.

[dmendesf]

Specs for this module seems to be 384*288@50Hz. Tried searching ebay for similar items but found none (I'm from Brazil and I think Ebay hides items that sellers don't post freight for here).

You can get 640 DALI cores out of old COVID scanner cams for less, 2-500$. I have a pile. example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/395364654783

[quince]

You can get 640 DALI cores out of old COVID scanner cams for less, 2-500$. I have a pile. example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/395364654783

This page says they're 384*288, not 640x512.

[Hazel]

Yes,this is our product:https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006911367695.html?pdp_npi=4%40dis%21USD%21US%20%241%2C708.01%21US%20%241%2C708.01%21%21%2112148.00%2112148.00%21%402136637717236125596261493e0117%2112000038702824102%21sh%21US%212680224027%21X&spm=a2g0o.store_pc_allItems_or_groupList.new_all_items_2008702527184.1005006911367695&gatewayAdapt=4itemAdapt

If you are interested, I can send you the catalog. Our products are benchmarked against FLIR, and I think the reason why they are different from a lot of cheap IR cameras is that our products output lossless and uncompressed raw data that supports pixel-level consistency, whereas a lot of the rest of the products that are for security and surveillance output compressed and processed video files.