What is Thermal Vision?

Did you know that all objects emit black body radiation? Did you know the lowest frequency typically emitted on Earth is LWIR (Long Wave Infrared)?

Objects are made of matter which are made of charged and uncharged particles. These particles are vibrating around due to their temperature, causing accelerations of these charged particles. Accelerating charges causes emission of radiation. It turns out that the average temperature of objects on Earth causes charged particles to emit their lowest frequencies in the 1-10um range.

These photons are not the right frequency to be seen by our eyes, but we can detect them in other ways. Microbolometer arrays allow us to detect these photons, allowing us to see in environments that are not illuminated by any source of light since objects are the emitters themselves. Even you are glowing like a light bulb in LWIR!

Hacking Hardware

Are you aware that thermal devices can be hacked? My roomate and I spent a couple of weeks hacking this project together, and the result was quite impressive. Details purposefully omitted since this project is kinda a secret. There was some heavy system verilogging, custom pcbing, and cryptography bypassing going on behind the scences. Artix-7’s were involved. This camera is not limited to 9fps like every other camera. I’ll just let the pictures talk.

Logic analyzing…

Matplotlibbing…

Packaging with cheap amazon VGA monitor…

(This is starting to look like Amanda Ripley’s motion tracker…)

Imaging…