My FLiR Lepton Thermal Camera Module has finally arrived from the USA. I managed to hook it up to my Raspberry Pi yesterday and successfully receive thermal images from it.
The purpose of purchasing this module is to build a handheld battery operated thermal camera. I can then use it to seek out the hot and cold spots in my house and see where the most heat is being lost. From that, I can see where I need to insulate better.
I am sure it will also come in handy for capturing wildlife and other uses.
The camera outputs video over SPI and sends 60 packets per frame with each packet being 1312 bits (164 bytes) long. The frame rate is variable and adjustable depending on the speed of your MCU. The resolution is 80×60 pixels so each packet is a line of video.
Now, I have a 4D Systems 32028 oLED display I bought many years ago and I would like to use that with the camera. However, it only has a serial interface and can’t display the raw video feed. I will need to process the frames and convert them into filled and coloured rectangles 4×4 pixels wide (the display is 320×240). This will significantly slow down the frame rate. Only time will tell just how slow but it may be still usable. If not, I’ll need to source a faster display.
I will of course blog if I have any further success with it.
UPDATE – 21st Oct 2015
After some extensive testing with the Serial 4D Systems LED display, it is obvious this display is just not fast enough. I would be lucky to get 1 frame per second. I have therefore ordered a 2.2″ SPI LCD display with an ILI9341 processor which I know is super fast. This will hopefully arrive tomorrow so the project is on hold until it arrives.
TheArduinoGuy 