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FLIR i5 infrared camera Review by Leo Simpson FLIR Systems’ new i5 camera is a compact handheld instrument weighing only 340g. You just aim and shoot with it and the result is a false colour picture showing the temperature gradients of a building, machinery, electrical equipment, a human body or whatever. You can use it as a precise non-contact thermometer which will also show the full temperature range of everything in the camera’s view. 12  Silicon Chip siliconchip.com.au A nyone familiar with infrared cameras will be surprised at the compact size, ease of use and precision measurements now available from this new FLIR Systems’ i5 model. It has a comfortable pistol grip and you can single-handedly aim, shoot and control all functions with your thumb and index finger. The front of the pistol grip incorporates a large trigger button which you press to take a picture. At the side of the pistol grip is a rubber cover which conceals and protects the mini-SD memory card, the mini USB socket and the socket for battery charging. The camera screen measures 45 x 60mm although the recorded image is square, at 80 x 80 pixels. The unit is simple to use and is controlled by eight buttons just below the screen. You turn it on by pressing the white power button on the right and use a small lever at the front of the camera to uncover the lens. To review the images you have already taken, you press the white archive button on the left and then the plus and minus buttons to scroll down through the images. Nine images in thumbnail format are displayed on the screen and you can examine individual images by clicking on them with the respective buttons. The left and right arrow buttons let you navigate through the various menu options as do the plus and minus buttons. The black buttons at left and right are “soft” or “context sensitive” and the changing labels at the bottom corners of the screen depict their functions. For example, if you are reviewing the image file, the soft buttons will let Chomping their way through your money! Infrared cameras are becoming very popular in pest control – here’s some termites making a meal of the studs and noggings inside a wall, with absolutely no evidence on the outside that anything is wrong. you erase an image or close it. You have two options for downloading images from the camera. The first is to use the supplied mini-USB to USB cable to connect the camera to your computer and then you can transfer images to a directory using Windows Explorer etc. Second, you can download the images directly from the mini-SD card via an external card reader or the integral card reader on a laptop. The supplied mini-SD card is 512MB, enough for many thousands of shots which are stored in JPEG (.jpg) format with a typical file size of 25KB. You can take thermal images in two false colour modes, so-called “iron bow” and “rainbow” as well as gray scale (ie, black & white). “Iron bow” is the conventional false colour mode which shows temperature gradients from white, ranging through yellow, orange and red to purple and black. The reference to iron, by the way, refers to the sequence of colours that a block of iron takes as it is heated up from cold to white hot. However, that is where the connection ends because when iron is white hot it is liquid and at several thousand degrees, far hotter than this camera can depict. The overall temperature range in the image is indicated in a scale at the bottom of the picture. This means that the camera automatically scales the colours to suit the overall temperature range depicted, whether it is over a few degrees C or hundreds of degrees C. You can turn off this automatic scaling function and lock the temperature for a series of images. This can be useful if you want to make direct comparisons of temperatures over the series of images. Each image also shows the temperature in the small central zone. If you are using the camera merely to observe heat gradients rather than A few happy snaps of common objects around the home and office: here a cup of tea (note the warm hands!) . . . . . . and here the family moggy. She’s got very thick fur, so it’s nowhere near as hot as her eyes . . . . . . finally, no-one can argue that the car has been used recently. The whole engine bay is “glowing” with heat! siliconchip.com.au October 2009  13 as 60cm. Naturally, the area of the picture you take will then depend on how far the camera is from the object being photographed. The range of temperature measurement is 0°-250°C and accuracy is ±2°C or ±2% of reading over the range from 10°-35°C. For some measurements you need to take into account the emissivity of surfaces and also their reflectivity. Going into the camera’s menu allows you to compensate for these factors. Images taken in rainbow mode highlight subtle transitions between hotter and warmer areas. By the way, it is possible to invert both the “iron bow” and “rainbow” palettes, if that is your preference. You might also wonder what is the point of having thermograms in a gray scale format. This is useful for people who are colour-blind. A lithium-ion battery powers the camera and it is charged from an external mains power supply (included). Typical operating time with a fully charged battery is five hours. Potential uses recording images, you can take precise temperature measurements by aiming the central cross-hairs on the screen at the point you want to measure. The fixed focus lens gives a field of view of 17° x 17° and it allows you to capture images at distances of as little The uses for this camera are much wider than you might first think. Sure, you can use it to check for hot spots in all sorts of equipment, electrical wiring, piping and so on. And if you take it outside a building or home on a cold day or night, you can quickly see where the heat is escaping, in spite of windows and doors being closed. But a thermal imaging camera such A “normal” photo of three intact cartridge fuses doesn’t show much evidence of a problem . . . . . . but the infrared photo certainly does. The fuse at left is cool but the other two are certainly very hot. 14  Silicon Chip as this can also be used to find w a t e r leaks in walls and floors, because the evaporation of water coming to the surface results in areas that are cooler than adjacent areas. Another FLIR shot of the car overleaf, this time looking under the bonnet from the side. It’s all heat! siliconchip.com.au They even had a FLIR in the air, to misquote CW McCall’s “Convoy”! Aerial FLIR can show which houses are unoccupied, which vehicles have recently been running, vacant land and even people on the ground show a different colour. As a matter of fact, during the period while we had this camera for review, the SILICON CHIP offices were inundated with water from a blocked roof drain in a severe storm. We had to engage a firm to have the water sucked out of the carpets and then big fans were installed to dry the carpets out over a period of several days. At the end of that period it was instructive to take shots around the office to see the areas which were still damp. They included the timber skirting boards and the base of a large bookshelf which had been made of particleboard – that stuff sucks water up like a sponge! The camera could also be useful in medical diagnosis. It can detect areas of inflammation in muscles and can even help in the detection of cancers. The FLIR i5 camera is supplied with a 100-230VAC switchmode plugpack charger, a mini-USB to USB cable, a 512MB mini-SD card, a mini-SD to SD card adaptor and a multi-language Getting Started Guide (with very small print!). There is also some very usesiliconchip.com.au ful documentation on three CDs: a training guide with short flash video files, the same Getting Started Guide in PDF format and a very good User’s Manual which includes sections on thermographic measurement techniques, building thermography and thermographic inspection of electrical installations. These sections will be most useful to anyone involved in building inspections, particularly with respect to building efficiency, home insulation and so on. Finally, there is a CD with FLIR’s ThermaCAM QuickReport software, enabling you to present all your images and measurements in a professional format. Using it We found the camera very simple to use, with just one proviso. When you are reasonably close to an object and you press the trigger button to take a picture, it is all too easy to find that the camera has jerked away from the target. Even if you hold the pistol grip with two hands and then carefully squeeze the trigger, it is difficult to hold it precisely on target, especially if you want the central cursor on a particular hot spot in the image, to show the temperature. However, it turns out that if you have recorded an image where the central cross-hairs have drifted off the wanted spot, you can then use the ThermaCAM software to move the cursor around on the image to indicate temperatures at will. Brilliant! Apart from that small quibble, this camera is likely to be a boon for those working in the building industry, particularly involved in building inspections. And it has very wide applications across many fields, in electrical installations, machinery and so on. Recommended retail price is $5550 plus GST. For further information, contact Trio Smartcal, 3 Byfield Street, North Ryde, NSW 2113. Phone 1300 853 407, website www.triosmartcal. com.au. In New Zealand, contact RF Test Solutions Ltd, PO Box 6844 Wellington, 6141. Phone 0800 738 378, website www.rftest.co.nz SC October 2009  15