Dev Kit Weekly: Handheld MLX90640 Thermal Imager скачать в хорошем качестве

Dev Kit Weekly: Handheld MLX90640 Thermal Imager

Enter the raffle (linked below) to win a free Handheld MLX90640 Thermal Imager! https://opensysmedia.formstack.com/fo... Want additional content? Follow us on social! https://linkin.bio/embeddedcomputingd... Thermal cameras, once rather exotic pieces of test equipment, are now commonly available for a few hundred dollars each for low-end models, and well into the thousands for more capable units. Being able to see thermal patterns with this type of instrument is a useful tool for equipment diagnosis and optimization, and having one available could certainly generate new use ideas. While these devices typically tend to be beyond impulse-buy territory, for this budget test equipment review I was able to get my hands on an MLX90640 IR camera, which costs a mere $98 on Amazon as of this writing. The device’s housing and electronics substrate is a quartet of printed circuit boards, with a power switch and two buttons as the only user inputs. One button saves images, while the other puts it into USB mode to transfer files to a computer. While the basic design seems like an acceptable tradeoff to keep the unit’s price down, its low resolution may not be. Looking at the unit’s stats, LCD resolving power is advertised as 240x320, while the MLX90640 IR sensor is much lower at 24x32 pixels. To put things in perspective, consider that the original Game Boy’s resolution was 160x144 pixels, and that for another hundred dollars or so other budget units are available with several times the thermal resolution, plus a housing. My experience with the device is that it does a good job in general heat mapping applications, such as showing if your 3D printer’s heated bead is broadly uniform, if lights are indeed hot, and where (generally) heat on a PCB is coming from. At the same time, the resolution is low enough that it can be difficult to tell what you’re looking at without careful consideration. If you need to know exactly which component on a PCB is fried and needs to be replaced, this will only get you in the ballpark. That being said, we are giving away the unit reviewed here, so if you find it interesting be sure to enter the raffle linked above. Good luck!