Auto-stitching with gimbal

[Architector]

Hi there,

Since a while I am in a loop of FOV, resolution, Euros, and so I had an Long Island Icetea in the sunshine this afternoon and I was thinking about getting a budget Thermal Camera with a smaller FOV and a nice Gimbal with an autostitch feature. So the thermal resolution looses importance and I can realize crazy thermal resolutions without wasting money. Is this an idea of a drunk guy, or might this be a good idea? I‘m asking, as I want to make professional thermal images of houses from outside (inside, too). Does anybody work with such a setup already?  Thanks in advance,

Till

[Architector]

Ok, no Gimbal needed. Flir seems to have the perfect solution, as seen in this video:

https://youtu.be/jXz9xwXVUCY

The pricing of the software is ca. 450€/a! For using only the autostitching, I guess, the old software should be okay for me. Do you think, there is a possibility to buy the old software second hand?

[CatalinaWOW]

Once you have the image in a viewable format (tiff, jpg or whatever) there are free stitching tools.  Autostitch and Hugin are two. With these you can generate multi-megapixel images   Not quite so easy, you can do frame stacking to improve sensitivity (MDT), though the results depend greatly on how the camera generates the viewable format images.  You can even get sub-pixel resolution by stacking slightly shifted images and doing appropriate signal processing.  I am not aware of free or widely available software to do the latter two processes.  You would have to search for the research papers on the processes and then write your own.

All of these things have their limitations.  Any motion in the image, from leaves fluttering in the wind,  clouds,  water (waves, rivers, waterfalls, rain, sprinklers), and people and animals will spoil the effect.   Also camera jitter can hurt, particularly if the motion occurs during the integration time of the sensor.   I use similar techniques in the visible region and find that perhaps one in five times the image rivals what a better imager would generate.  Another two times in five the resulting image is visually pleasing, but inaccurate in some way.  The remainder are often literally unviewable.  There is something wrong about them.  You find them disturbing, but often can't pick out what is wrong. 

[svgurus]

A member of this forum with nickname Ultrapurple was making great big panoramas, unfortunately he passed some time ago but you can check out his flickr - https://www.flickr.com/photos/ultrapurple/albums/72157629533942914/page3
Flir also posted some there - https://www.flickr.com/photos/flirsystems/page1
Better read their software manual, afaik they stitch no more than 9 photos in 1 take, same for testo
For technical side, you need camera that really fixes the temperature span, upper and lower values. For narrow fov you need one with changeable lenses, and if you want to use motorized gimbal with smartphone-attached imager your phony app needs to make shots when you press the volume button(i thought it was a basic feature lol)
At first i was really inspired by Giles work and wanted to make something alike but this turned out to be more pain in a backside than i thought so i switched to another types of photography

[tmbinc]

A while ago, I used Microsoft ICE to stitch the raw 16-bit (well, 14-bit) output that my DIY (NV2-based) thermal camera produces. Unfortunately, Microsoft ICE isn't actively supported anymore but you can still find a download. It's free, and quality-wise it's better than most other tools but the big benefit is that it supports 16-bit processing...

Well, almost - it needs a patch though to keep the 16-bit depth during the processing, as documented here:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/image-stiching-with-microsoft-ice-2/

(Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft, but in an area unrelated to ICE.)

[Bill W]

  I am not aware of free or widely available software to do the latter two processes.  You would have to search for the research papers on the processes and then write your own.

Might be worth looking at the various astrophotography tools, they need to do stacking / superresolution / 16 bit  too.
I have not tried any (for visual or thermal)

[Vipitis]

The original E4 thread with all the Exiftool scripts had one solution where you stich the raw image data but then assemble it again as a radiometric jepg. Might be this right here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/flir-e4-thermal-imaging-camera-teardown/msg348715/#msg348715

[marcheloka]

A member of this forum with nickname Ultrapurple was making great big panoramas, unfortunately he passed some time ago but you can check out his flickr - https://www.flickr.com/photos/ultrapurple/albums/72157629533942914/page3

That's the first I'm hearing of this was trying to figure out where he went a few weeks ago. RIP.

This photo of his is incredible: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ultrapurple/40922439833/in/pool-therm-app-users/

That is an amazing image Ultrapurple got. I noticed he did it with using:

1. Super-resolution which is combining 4 slightly moved frames on the same direction which produces 1 frame with better quality
2. And then stitching this all together using MS ICE

While stiching is very well explained in the megathread (thought i did not try it yet) how to produce so many ultra-resolution frames easily? I mean someone posted a way to make one superresolution image from 4 but it is time-consuming to do it like 16 times to get 16 images which i need to stich them later for a 16-image-super-panorama that im dreaming of.

Another thing - this would be super-useful if you could take for example 4 images fast, one after another, by pressing and holding your camera shoot button. This idea came up in the megathread but i did not see anyone do this.

This way we would get instantly 4 (or 16, why not) slightly tilted frames which super-resolution thing would then enhance to better quality.

Last step is stitching on MS ICE and this way each one of us could very easily make these ultra-pictures with no problem. I reallly dream of putting that kind of mega-image on the first page of my thermographic building-check reports. People would then really be astonished just by looking at the first page of my work.