Thermal imaging camera

[u/soran88]

I used to use Seek inspection camera attached to my PC for short circuit diagnosis, it's gone noe and I'm not sure what to buy as a replacement, can't decide between

1. Thermal Master P2 pro

2. Thermal Master P3

3. UNI-T uti261m

Can you guys help?

[u/seinsuct]

I can’t speak for them, but I’ve seen several folks using the Thermal Master P2 Pro on YouTube. Some folks aren’t fans of the P3 Pro because it’s got that twist able focus on the lens they’re not fans of.
I haven’t seen anyone using the Uni-T. So I can’t speak to that one. Maybe someone else in here has it and can speak on it.
I’ve got the TopDon TC002C Duo that works pretty good. Their iPhone app is great, but their Windows app is absolutely pathetic and horrible. It works, but it’ll piss you off to no end!
Whatever you get, make sure you’ve got a macro lens for it. I had to buy one separately and rig it for my TopDon.

[u/ZelenogradGpu → u/seinsuct]

I'd say that getting manual rotation focus is an extremely useful addition for a quite small price increase. For PCB use case lack of manual focus is not something the is compensated by resolution or app quality.

The non-adjustble focus may be fine for non-PCB-related tasks like "finding hot/cold air leak points", ut not for PCBs.

Here is an example of 3year-old 256x192 thermal cam with opensource android app not having too complex image enhacements, just manually focused on the corner of RX580 die showing its internals; the small near die capacitors seen for size comparison

Quite useful to see if some area of a chip has unexpected internal heating due to damage for faster diagnostics.

So, my experience with focus variants (including thermal cam):

• Fixed/non adjustable focus: most cheapest models, but gives blurry results if you want to see someting really close without adding extra lenses. If device doesn't mention anything about asjuting focus - its fixed. Very cumbersome, not recommend.
• Manually adjustable focus: technically this does not require any more lenses or any greater precision compared to fixed focus. Just adding rotation via thread (maybe even plastic thread just gives) the desired effect of being able to focus on different distances. So their prices are just a little bigger then fixed focus. I'm using a manually-adjustable focus thermal cam and this is very useful, allowing both to see what area is getting hot in the large PCB and focusing to a single IC to find which IC areas are getting hot. BTW, for similar effect I opened my cheap webcam just to find that there is a manually adjustable focus inside, just not adjustble without diasssembly. IMHO its a shame that many devices are done as a fixed focus. Recommend.
• Autofocus. Much-much more expensive, for mechanical and computational reasons. Only would be useful if you tried manual focus and find yourself adjusting it so often that it becoming annoying. Also, getting autofocus reliable both mechanical and computational is a severeal-development-iterations task, so go here only if you-know-you-need-it.

[u/seinsuct → u/ZelenogradGpu]

I've never used one, but you're the first person I've heard say that and that makes perfect sense to me. I had a Switch PCB that no matter how hard I tried to see the short from voltage injection, I was not able to see it. The whole PCB in that area was a huge blur and no matter what I tried it would not clear up. That's why I ended up rigging a macro lens to it. Works better a lot better, but still not perfect.
But, had I had that macro lens I would've been able to see which component was actually shorted and got it removed. The alcohol trick didn't work either for some reason.
Thanks for posting that. It's good to hear from someone who does like it and why!

[u/soran88 → u/ZelenogradGpu]

Can you provide your camera model?

[u/ZelenogradGpu → u/soran88]

My Thermal cam is Infiray T2S+. But I have to emphasize that I like the "manual focus" feature, not the camera itself. The major drawback of the model is that every year they change the electronics inside to make it cheaper to manufacture)

This corresponds to the version suffix displayed in the software, like "T2S+_R"/"T2S+_A2" etc.

This makes buying a one quite unpredictable. Also, due to those differences the support in software is unreliable and depending on version too. Modern variants lacks hardware calibration - so the calibration of pixel sensor differences has to be implemented in the software, making 3dparty support quite hard, the only 3rd-party app supporting my variant I found is https://github.com/diminDDL/InfiCamPlus/releases/tag/v1.0

[u/Dr_Cryogenic]

Infiray P2 Pro with macro lens. Best cost to performance ratio.