Gear – ‘Seek’ thermal camera attachment.

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Ok, this is, like, ten shades of cool. Here’s a few articles for background:

Heat seeker: Meet the thermal-imaging camera you can afford

The Seek Thermal Infrared Camera for iPhone and Android

Seek Thermal, a $199 Thermal Imaging Camera for Your Phone

Short version: for $200 you can see in the dark if there’s bad guys, warm car engines, animals, or other heat sources lurjing around your AO. This really is one of those products that is ‘limited only by your imagination’. Pour hot water down a clogged pipe to find the clog, see how much propane is in a tank, see if the dog was sleeping on your couch, see if the cars in the driveway/parking lot have been used recently, where is the deer you shot just before sundown, is that a SWAT team hiding in the bushes, which beer in the fridge is the coldest, and, possibly, is that gal across the room really into you or not.

For the survivalist I can see this thing having all sorts of uses…seeing if something is out there in the dark, checking the ground for heat sources from recently extinguished fires, seeing what guns in the rack may have been handled/fired recently, etc, etc.

I’m tellin’ ya, man….we’re living in a Star Trek world more and more everyday. And while the technology is interesting enough on its own, it isnt that new since its been around a while. Whats new is dropping it down to the price of HiPoint pistol and a box of ammo.

I think I may have to get one of these.

6 thoughts on “Gear – ‘Seek’ thermal camera attachment.”

  1. My fire company has a thermal imager we picked up a few years ago. It was $15,000 new.

    It is a remarkably useful gizmo. Ours comes with a separate handheld monitor that receives a transmitted image of whatever is shown on the handheld units screen. I’ve used it on occasion to send messages the chief by ‘writing’ message on a cold surface with my finger: the areas my finger touched even briefly show up white hot.

    From a prepper standpoint where such a thing really shines is by showing what your various property and individual heat signatures are and how much they would reveal to an adversary equipped with say thermal armored vehicle sights and the like.

    If you can get your hands on one they are great for trying to see how you can hide your own thermal signature.

    The seriously good units for fire service use are down now to about 5-8 grand.

  2. I’ve had one on order since they announced. Still waiting for it and I’m in the low-hundreds. The Apple App store just released the software, so I’m expecting my unit to ship soon.

    The downside is the resolution. I have 160×120 units (1/4th VGA resolution or 19200 pixels) for my truck to extend “sight” out beyond my headlights at night. The Seek is a little better – 32,000 pixels. Military FLIR tech _starts_ at VGA (640×480) – 307,200 pixels with MUCH better thermal resolution such that you can see things like where a car drove because of the heat left on the pavement by the warm tires. The military resolution ramps up from there. I don’t know what resolution the camera’s on an Apache or Predator drone are, but I’m bettering your tax dollars they are much better than VGA resolution…

    Still for the size, convenience, and price, you can’t beat this. I’m just hoping they ramp up the resolution quickly… I’m looking forward to checking out my new house with FLIR to see where I need insulation this winter.

  5. I would really like a legit Thermal but even the FLIR Scout is running 3k and change. I fear that price puts it in the ‘probably not getting acted on’ want list.

  6. One of the guys at http://www.toolguyd.com recently reviewed a thermal imager – the KeySight TrueIR Thermal Imager and there’s another review on the FLIR line of thermal imagers. The small FLIR has MSRP of a grand, and based on the screenshots, works pretty well. He didn’t do any distance testing so no clue if it’s any good for locating deer (and other things) in the woods.

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