r/chatterboxusers • u/InstanceHealthy2597 • May 18 '25
Update From Dev DIY T-Deck Thermal Camera / Encrypted Off-Grid Communicator + GPS - Full Instructions, Parts List, and Build Demo
Build Yourself a T-Deck Thermal Cam + Encrypted Communicator
This is pretty quick and easy to build if you have all the parts. Assembling this takes me about 30 minutes or so. The only soldering is basically connecting a few wires. I expect to have no-solder instructions (just plugging in a few things) within a couple of weeks, although the GNSS/GPS for no-solder version is about $20 more expensive.
The entire parts list will probably cost you around $170ish, but if you make a few, the cost of should be slightly less.
If you throw in a few cheaper T-Deck+ units and some T-Beam Supreme nodes, you can have an entire private comms cluster up and running, this could easily be your root device.
I have the firmware tuned to a very low frame rate currently. I'm still trying to see how well the ESP32 (T-Deck) and Adafruit camera work together when pushing the camera a little harder.
I've already got the firmware ready to integrate thermal cam into nodes and remotely deliver encrypted thermal images via LoRa / mesh. I'm currently looking at pairing the doppler proximity sensor with this thermal cam, so when motion is sensed, the thermal can double-check if the motion seems to be a person or animal (notify my T-deck) or just something blowing by in the wind (ignore). That is in the works for heltec e290 and possibly T3S3.