I like to tinker.......
So the conversation in my brain went something like...........
Trying to constantly scan with my rifle mounted thermal makes my arms tired. I guess I can use a tripod each time. Heck no, that's annoying and cumbersome. I need a handheld scanner to look around, damn, I don't want to pay that much,...... I want a 640, damn the 640's are too high, don't want to pay the prices for a 640....
You can make your own........ oh well there went my free time, better learn some CAD.
While I've always wanted to put a thermal on one of my drones, I've always been too chicken to put that kind of money in the air and do more than fly it around line of sight. However I kept a eye on the best thermal cameras to do so. A little while ago FLIR came out with their VUE and VUE pro line. The main difference between the two is the pro line will record internally to a micro SD card and will connect to your phone via bluetooth for setting changes.
The modular aspect of these cameras that have no viewfinder intrigued me as something that could be made into other things. I've got lots more ideas that I'll be working on in the upcoming weeks...
So I picked up a FLIR Vue Pro 640 with the 19mm lens and decided I'd use some of my old FPV goggles as the viewer for the camera. Now fortunately these goggles already have a resolution of 640x480 so they made a good fit. Not to mention they have a much larger FOV to the eye than most of the thermal viewers I've looked through.
So the next question is how to mate this:
With:
So lets start with a mockup:
Enter some rudimentary CAD design.....
That then got more complicated.... I even added a picatinney rail to add an IR laser to later on for pointing things out to folks using NOD's and not thermal.
Then on to 3d printing the design and testing some fitting...
On to some rewiring of the goggles. Since the goggles natively take 6-13v and the FLIR lets out magic smoke above 6v, I added some voltage regulators. Also the FLIR uses the same pinouts as GOPRO cameras do, this make finding connection cables much easier!
So CAD design and printing are doing well, so we'll go ahead and use some Sugru (rubber bonding clay) to connect the FPV goggles with the 3d printed mount to hold and protect the FLIR.
Using a zip tie through the gopro mount for the FLIR to hold the thermal in place on the 3d printed part works great!!! Voltage works well. I can now use either the original 7v (2s) batteries that came with the goggles to power both the goggles and the FLIR, or any of the plentiful 5v battery packs that are out there. I just need to do some testing of battery life......
Quick clip testing out the internal recording:
So the conversation in my brain went something like...........
Trying to constantly scan with my rifle mounted thermal makes my arms tired. I guess I can use a tripod each time. Heck no, that's annoying and cumbersome. I need a handheld scanner to look around, damn, I don't want to pay that much,...... I want a 640, damn the 640's are too high, don't want to pay the prices for a 640....
You can make your own........ oh well there went my free time, better learn some CAD.
While I've always wanted to put a thermal on one of my drones, I've always been too chicken to put that kind of money in the air and do more than fly it around line of sight. However I kept a eye on the best thermal cameras to do so. A little while ago FLIR came out with their VUE and VUE pro line. The main difference between the two is the pro line will record internally to a micro SD card and will connect to your phone via bluetooth for setting changes.
The modular aspect of these cameras that have no viewfinder intrigued me as something that could be made into other things. I've got lots more ideas that I'll be working on in the upcoming weeks...
So I picked up a FLIR Vue Pro 640 with the 19mm lens and decided I'd use some of my old FPV goggles as the viewer for the camera. Now fortunately these goggles already have a resolution of 640x480 so they made a good fit. Not to mention they have a much larger FOV to the eye than most of the thermal viewers I've looked through.
So the next question is how to mate this:
With:
So lets start with a mockup:
Enter some rudimentary CAD design.....
That then got more complicated.... I even added a picatinney rail to add an IR laser to later on for pointing things out to folks using NOD's and not thermal.
Then on to 3d printing the design and testing some fitting...
On to some rewiring of the goggles. Since the goggles natively take 6-13v and the FLIR lets out magic smoke above 6v, I added some voltage regulators. Also the FLIR uses the same pinouts as GOPRO cameras do, this make finding connection cables much easier!
So CAD design and printing are doing well, so we'll go ahead and use some Sugru (rubber bonding clay) to connect the FPV goggles with the 3d printed mount to hold and protect the FLIR.
Using a zip tie through the gopro mount for the FLIR to hold the thermal in place on the 3d printed part works great!!! Voltage works well. I can now use either the original 7v (2s) batteries that came with the goggles to power both the goggles and the FLIR, or any of the plentiful 5v battery packs that are out there. I just need to do some testing of battery life......
Quick clip testing out the internal recording:
