See the Invisible with a Thermal Network Camera

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Over the past couple of decades, we’ve seen great leaps in innovation of enhanced vision technologies, partially, if not predominantly, driven by military need and a private sector’s desire to provide for that need. Night vision is certainly one of those technologies, but the more interesting one, at least for me, has been infrared imaging.

Infrared imaging allows an individual to see not light, but heat. This has a variety of uses, from the industrial examination of equipment or construction, security, surveillance and recreational/tactical hunting (probably better named “reconnaissance”). As the technologies develop, the equipment and its manufacturing becomes more cost efficient. As a result, the prices drop for the end user.

Thermal Imaging

What does an thermal network camera actually do? How does infrared imaging actually work? What does it look like?

An thermal network camera is a non-contact device that detects infrared energy (heat) and converts it into an electronic signal, which is then processed to produce a thermal image on a video monitor and perform temperature calculations. Heat sensed by an thermal network camera can be very precisely quantified, or measured, allowing you to not only monitor thermal performance, but also identify and evaluate the relative severity of heat-related problems.

The image itself, can be viewed on a monitor with the heat values moved into a human-visible spectrum. An example of a typical thermal image may look something like this:

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What’s shown in the image above is a picture of the floor in my apartment, right above where the water heater in the basement has its hot water line running up and then across to the side of the building to supply hot water to the apartments above mine. When you look at the floor with the naked eye, you see a normal softwood floor. If you place your hand on the floor, you can feel that a specific strip is warmer than the surrounding floor, but you can’t see the heat discrepancy. Only when pointing the thermal network camera at it do you see the rather large difference and the specific shape of the warmer area.

This article comes from its-tactical edit released

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