This week’s EYE ON NPI knows where New York Hottest Club is at, it’s the Teledyne FLIR Lepton® 3.1R Pocket-Sized Thermal Camera, a bite-sized full-featured video camera for remote thermal measurements.
With a resolution of 160×120 pixels, remote temperature measurements of -40°C to +300°C, and the size of a coin, this camera can be embedded into any kind of product, whether it’s running Linux, RTOS or a plain old microcontroller. Thermal cameras are multi-purpose, with usage in medical, industrial, construction, maintenance and security industries.
Use them to make sure equipment is running at the right temperature and not overheating, that insulation for a room is performing adequately, locating people or animals, or detecting fevers without touching.
FLIR makes the best low-cost, small-size thermal cameras and they’re available off-the-shelf at DigiKey for quick integration. Each camera outputs either a simple grayscale-valued frame or one with a false-color RGB888 palette – the palette can be configured over I2C.
The Lepton 3.1R is one of a series of cameras available from FLIR, including the Lepton 2 and 3.5. What’s great is all have the same physical pinout and shape that can plug into a socket.
This is great for manufacturing yield and field repair: the expensive module is placed last in the manufacturing line so earlier yield issues don’t affect it. Also you can swap different resolution/FOV modules to customize for the end-user. For example, the Lepton 2 is a little less expensive but has only 80×60 pixels. Or you can upgrade to the Lepton 3.5 with similar resolution but a narrower FOV. Note that the FOV will affect the distortion greatly: a wider FOV requires a lens to focus the IR emissions but will fisheye the middle and compress the edges.
There’s software from Teledyne FLIR that will “de-warp” the 3.1R’s output, using Open CV, to give you more realistic imagery.
To learn how to work with these modules, we recommend the Lepton engineering integration guide. Unlike the simplest thermal camera modules and sensors, which use only I2C, or the most complex USB-video output devices, the Leptons use a combination on I2C for configuration – called the CCI Command and Control Interface – and SPI for VoSPI – a.k.a. video over SPI.
This makes them possible to integrate with a wide range of microcontrollers or microcomputers.
As mentioned before, you don’t solder the cameras to the PCB. Instead they are plugged into a common Molex 1050281001 socket which is only $1 at DigiKey and comes on a pick-and-place reel.
If you want to get started very quickly, DigiKey and GroupGets have partnered up to offer a wide range of breakout boards, USB adapters and dev-boards that feature the Teledyne FLIR Leptons.
GroupGets also published firmware and example code to get you started with their products so you can quickly evaluate the Lepton and make sure it will work and what resolution/FOV is ideal: simply swap the different models in and out of the Molex socket.
GroupGets also works with makers to get their prototypes to market, working with DigiKey for part sourcing so if you have an idea and need a help making it to production check them out!
If you need a high-quality thermal camera that is plug-and-play, easy to integrate and at a great cost, the Teledyne FLIR Lepton 3.1R Pocket-Sized Thermal Camera is hot hot HOT and in stock right now for immediate purchase from DigiKey.
Order today, pick up an eval board too, and you can be measuring the world around you by tomorrow afternoon.
See the video below:
See the manufacturer’s video: