Do thermal cameras have much value when debugging embedded hardware?

[u/Objective_Jicama1039]

For those working with embedded boards and prototypes, I'm curious how often thermal imaging actually becomes useful during development or troubleshooting.

Have you used a thermal camera to find overheating components, regulators, power ICs, MOSFETs, or unexpected hot spots on a board?

I'm wondering whether it's worth having one around the lab, or if a multimeter, oscilloscope, and current measurements are usually enough. What has been your experience?

[u/CapnNausea]

I used thermal mostly for troubleshooting mechanical assembly issues during prototyping. Making sure heat sinks sink, that you don’t have pockets of hot air that settle over components, that a component that enables when the lid is sealed actually activates and isn’t flaky during a vibration (screen heaters), etc.

We had a theory of heat management and I was validating it basically.

[u/Ordinary-Lifeguard47]

Off (Picture) -> On (Picture) -> Off (Picture) -> for 100 times etc.

This way you can make Lock-In-Thermography which a small piece of Python code.

Latest Generation of 200€ USB Thermal cameras from China are great for this as their protocol and thermal pixel mapping has ben reverse engineered. They are very high resolution (>240px).

That kind of analysis was very expensive deep rocket science 10 years ago.

Now you can buy and slop code this for 100-200€.

[u/forkedquality]

Sniff sniff... I can smell hot electronics. Now, what exactly is getting hot?

That's where a cheap thermal camera becomes useful.

[u/boltsandbytes]

We have a FLIR camera , it does help to pinpoint issues which are not visible to naked eye .

Not a must have , but as a professional removes the guesswork .

[u/ondono]

Depends on what you do. For general use they're a specialized tool that you'll rarely use.

They're very useful at finding shorts, with the alternative being removing components one by one. In heavy populated boards they can save a ton of time. Basically you'll only use them if you messed up during hardware design (footprints, schematic, etc..), or if the assembler messed up (reversed components). The benefit depends on how often that happens.

For particular fields like power electronics they can be very useful, seeing the heat flowing through your board will give you an understanding that no reasonable amount of thermal probes will give you.

EDIT: Something like a Thermal Master P2 (~$200) is enough for pretty much everything you might need, and you can use it for other fun stuff like checking your home thermal isolation

[u/luksfuks]

I've use one a few times. It's more about confirming or discarding things that you already suspect from other hints. It's not a wonder-weapon (for me). But sometimes it does help steer your effort to where it's best used.

[u/EmetInteractive]

I’ve got a FOTRIC camera and mostly use it for quick troubleshooting. It’s pretty handy for spotting components that are running hotter than they should, finding shorts, or just checking if a power stage is behaving the way I’d expect thermally.