I was not going to let Robert and Bean having all the fun with the thermal imagers, so I decided to start scanning ebay for a cheap one.
So I already have a lab style thermal imager (Calibrated, with multiple lens etc ...
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/msg2746508/#msg2746508) but, I wanted something more mobile I could carry where I wanted to. With a battery and its own screen.
Last week I found this one:
Ok it's huge but, it was cheap and got its own screen and power source. The Bullard TIx is an old Firefighting thermal imager. Normally the thermal imager coming from fire department unit are beaten to death but this one is in remarkably good condition. Was sold for parts and the seller did precise in the description that the camera was starting but screen was staying black.
After getting the camera and testing a little bit with my 1A bench power supply, I realized it needed more juice. Switched to a bigger PSU and the camera started correctly. When booting up it need a good 1 amp, then stay at 800ma for a while and stabilize at 200ma after something like 10 seconds. In the warming up phase (10s) the screen stay dark.
So the seller had the wrong power supply or was too impatient to wait more than 10s. In any case I got a good deal
The Bullard ITx is equipped with a Raytheon 300D thermal core with a resolution of 320x240 and 30Hz refresh rate. It’s using a Barium Strontium Titanate (BST) detector, which is the older technology replaced by cheaper and simpler Microbolometer. Apparently they stopped making BST core because of complexity and production cost but the image quality is supposed to be really good.
My soldering Iron.
You can manually close the Iris to lower heat sensitivity.
A snap of the workshop. Image quality is a lot better in real. Because the Bullard ITx is lacking a video out I had to grab a picture of the cheap LCD with my camera.
The inside is really simple. This is pretty much a Raytheon 300D thermal core with a LCD in an enclosure
Next steps are, finding a suitable battery and adding a video out.
As a side note, I found the listed price, and in 2008 they were selling it for only 18,500$US