Thermal imaging

Found one of these cheap enough to consider buying. Not as high a resolution as I would like, but seems to do a pretty decent job, regardless. It's a FLIR Scout TK monocular thermal imager.

So I started up the C5Z and let it run for several minutes, then started taking video imaging data with this thing. Started under the hood, then put the car up on the lift and scanned the underside too.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dns_c-AetPw

Not too bad. Sure shows me where the heat is coming from.

Those are pretty cool. I've considered getting something from flir but never got around to it. I've seen people use it on their homes to find drafts and where they are loosing heat or A/C.

There are a few companies selling little attachments for your smart phone that are thermal imagers. They look to be pretty handy.

The ones I've been eyeballing are:

• FLIR One Pro
• Seek Thermal Compact Pro
• Therm-App Imager

The other day I was checking out the AC compressor coolant pressures on the C5Z, because I had been hearing the AC compressor clicking on and off at idle when cold, so I had the car running for quite a while while I was checking the gauges. To keep the exhaust fumes out of the garage, I put the contraption I made up out of plastic drain pipe onto the exhaust tips on the car. This helps not only with extracting the exhaust fumes from the garage, but it greatly reduces the noise level too, which is nice when trying to listen for any unusual noises from the engine compartment.

Anyway, I knew the exhaust gases were pretty hot, as shown when I used my FLIR thermal imaging scope.



But I guess I just didn't think about it and that the length of time I was running the engine might have an impact on those plastic tubing pipes I was using.







Didn't melt them to the point where they opened up, so they are still usable. But certainly something I need to keep in mind in the future. Maybe if it weren't so blasted hot in the garage I could have run the engine longer without them heating up quite so fast. Plus I guess revving up the engine a bit while checking the AC pressure gauges certainly had an influence too.

Interesting how only two of the four pipes melted like they did.

In any event, the AC coolant pressures looked OK to me. Maybe a little high on the low pressure side, but nothing bad enough to do anything about. Certainly the AC is pumping out pretty cold air in the passenger compartment so the system as a whole seems to be working pretty well.

That's pretty cool!
One of our Fire Departments here has a Drone w/ FLIR on it. They've used it on fires, and to assist a few different LE agencies to search for wanted subjects hiding.

On one of my other forums, one of the members told a pretty interesting story about one of his experiences with thermal imaging.

Back when I was a deputy we had a crashed stolen car. The suspect at the scene was found outside the car and stated he was not the driver, that he was only a passenger. The Fire Chief was on scene and heard him make this statement. He had a thermal imaging video camera and shot the interior of the car. It indicated that there was only one person in the vehicle, and that person had been in the drivers seat!

Click to expand...

And once you experience thermal imaging and night vision first hand, you learn pretty quickly that it will be very difficult to evade detection from someone who has access to that sort of equipment.

Heck, i was showing Connie just the other day how you can actually see foot prints left on the floor via thermal imaging.