Flir One Pro Review: Excellent thermal Camera for the mobile phone, at a price

Flir is mainly synonymous with thermal cameras of cheap mobile sensors to industrial and military applications. The company entered for the first time in mobile devices with an iPhone camera and then Dungel. Flir One came to Android a few years ago with a microscopic version, but that was directly at the dawn of USB Type-C. Thus, that first camera has become outdated quickly. Now there is a new flyer, in fact two of them. Flir One pays $ 199 and Flir One Pro will operate $ 399.

Like previous devices in the Flir One family, these cameras use a pair of FLIR sensors and MSX technology to produce easier thermal images in decoding. The new Type-C connector allows the camera to work on most of the modern Android devices, and you can even control the suitability of work with your case. Flir One Pro, which I was tested, is undoubtedly great, but it is a difficult sale at $ 400. However, the cheapest individual may be a good value (although the animal -dragged vehicles are applied) to keep the eye sensitive eye to things all over the house.

Goodness

Not very good

Basics

Flir One and Flir One Pro are the independent dongle that connects to your phone’s Type-C port. They have batteries, so you have to remember charging them before use, but this means that they will not reduce your phone battery life. The camera is charged on the type C, though, which is comfortable. Many accessories are still using microusb, but Flir is everything in the type C.

There are two sensors on the third generation of Flir One and Flir One Pro, but the preparation is slightly different. Flir’s Lepton Therm Sensor 90 x 60 pixels on Flir. Flir One Pro jumps to 160×120 to represent a more clear representation of the object’s thermal properties. It is clear that both are much smaller than the JPEG 1440×1080 files that were exported by the FLIR application. Thermal data is overcome with the signal from the standard RGB sensor, which adds edges to the image. Instead of multicolored points, you can see the shape of objects along with the heat signature.

In addition to accuracy differences, there are some capabilities that only work on the most powerful (and expensive) Pro from the camera. For example, you can read the temperature in multiple locations and move to a low gain mode. The latter allows the professional camera to read temperatures of up to 752 degrees Fahrenheit (400 ° C), compared to only 248 degrees Fahrenheit (120 ° C) for the regular camera. Flir also says that the Pro -processing post -processing technology is more effective to make the images more clear.

Using Flir One Pro

The release of the camera that I was experiencing is a professional, so all my notes (and the image form) depend on it. One of the most amazing things in this camera is the telescope, which is included in both Pro and regular version. It is of the type C, but the entire conductor flows from the housing with the transformation of the phone call on the camera. Thus, Flir can adjust it to suit your phone even if you have a huge condition. There is no case? Shorten the conductor to get the camera body directly on the phone for more stability.

Above the right: the USB port extended.

Flir One Pro contains rough design with rubber bumps at the top and bottom. On the bottom edge there is a Type-C charging and power button input. Do not charge the camera quickly, as it exceeds about 5W. Therefore, be sure to give it a lot of time to charge it before you need it. Flair says the battery is good for an hour, but this looks optimistic. I see approximately 45 minutes of use on a shipment, and this is the time it takes to fill the battery backup.

The devices are solid, but I am less happy with the Flir’s Android app. It is slow and surprising after all this time. I got a full renovation of the third generation camera, but it is still crashing and sometimes failing to download the user interface. When the camera has an hour of battery life only, I can’t really adhere to annoying applications. Ideally, you should be able to connect the camera to enter, press the button, and launch the camera lens immediately. In fact, you sometimes need to close the application to make it recognize the camera.

When the camera starts, the camera lens provides a lot of tools available without drilling in lists. Some of them should be in a list of chaos. The lens frame is painfully slow, but this is the restriction imposed by the government on FLIR. You need a special export license for the thermal camera systems operating above 9 frames per second. Therefore, the video on one Flir is intentionally paralyzed.

On the upper edge (landscape) is a settings tool toolbar that you can go out to adjust the settings such as a color filter, earning and Parallax. The latter is important because the image of the lenses will not necessarily line up properly at all distances. This was something missing from the previous Flir One, but the Cat S60 was in the camera application. I am pleased to see it listed in the updated independent Flir application. It is painful, but your photos end up looking much more beautiful over medium distances while properly aligned all the edges. The alignment is still out of long distances. The professional camera also includes an option in this toolbar for its heart from the MSX mode to pure RGB or pure thermal. I don’t think there is any practical use of this; It is just an offer.

Fixed images look solid for me (see above to get an exhibition). Although the accuracy is not high, you get good thermal details. The edges of MSX are made of uniformly recognized areas, while they are just colored swabs without MSX. However, adding temperature measurements to the living image is embarrassing. The user interface does not revolve for this with the screen, making the menu that is difficult to read. Pro supports up to three points, as well as rectangular and circle area measurements. I recommend not to disturb more than one point in the direct view – just take a picture. These are radiological files, which means that they include all temperature definition data. The exhibition in FLIR app allows you to edit it after the fact that the candidate’s measurements and temperature changes. The preserved image can be shared as regular JPEG for other applications.

conclusion

Finding a convincing use of FLIR cameras is a little challenge. You can use it to check the brief wires, identify clogged pipes, and even find a lost pet in the dark. I have already used the old Flir One to find a leak on my roof after a very bad storm last year. These are not things that appear a lot. Only most people are likely to use FLIR to take cold thermal images.

It is difficult to justify the professional version of the camera for 400 dollars when regularly do almost most things. At a price of $ 200 (less than $ 50 of Old Flir One), you can likely explain that it is a great game that may one day be happy when the storm blows.