I don't think there is any harm in my including a copy of my message to SEEK here as a record of events for others to read so here it is:
From Fraser to SEEK....................
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Dear Sir/Madam,
I have been an industrial thermal camera user for the past 27 years and presently own 29 such cameras in my collection. I collect and repair thermal camera technology so have component level repair experience with microbolometer based thermal imaging cores. My reference designs on which I cut my teeth were the venerable FLIR PM570 and PM695 cameras
I have ordered a SEEK camera from you via a friend in the USA and I am currently waiting for its arrival as part of your order fulfilment plan.
In the mean time I have been working with friends on the testing of your product.Please see the postings by myself and others on the EEVBlog forum going backwards from this point:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/yet-another-cheap-thermal-imager-incoming/msg537479/#msg537479 My user ID on EEVBlog is "Aurora"
I spent my evening and much of the night working with "Miguelvp" and others to determine the cause of a Flat Field Correction issue that appears to be present in your SEEK camera design. As you will see the camera appears to be suffering from thermal contamination of the FFC shutter and this causes a temperature gradient in the FFC results table that is clearly visible to the user. This is unfortunate as it degrades performance and could impact upon the SEEK cameras reputation in the user community.
Due to the limits of testing to date, I have not been able to determine (using Miguelvp's tests) whether the issue only occurs with small temperature span settings, but it is pretty obvious from the images that the FFC on your camera has some thermal gradient issues.
It has been suggested that the thermal gradient on the FFC shutter flag may be induced by localised heating within the lens assembly and the frequent operation of the FFC shutter, that is in itself unusual in my experience. Such frequent FFC events have a negative impact on the user experience as even the more common >2 minute interval attracts criticism from the unenlightened consumer thermal camera user community. Many do not know the purpose of the FFC event and they just see it as a freezing of the image that caused annoyance.
I should be grateful for any comment that you are able to make on this matter and hope that your R&D team may have some comment on the frequent FFC events and shutter flag thermal contamination that is present in your camera.
I hope that you will see the positive attitude that members of the EEVBlog forum have towards you product and our desire to help you make it as good as it can be for our mutual benefit. When I receive my SEEK camera I will be happy to offer any UAT comment that may be helpful to you.
Kindest Regards
Fraser
(Surname and email address removed)
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Please bear in mind this was written at 04:00(ish) in the morning so no critiques on the writing style or grammer please
Fraser