Thermal Imagers

Factual Questions
1
      • I want one.
        …
  • I saw a site once where someone had converted a videocamera or a night-vision camera into one somehow, they used a IR-pass filter over the lens and jacked with an internal electrical setting. (-I’m not talking about the Sony video camera that could see through clothes) Cheapo night vision scopes are only $70 now, and digital cameras are pretty cheap too so any mod wouldn’t cost much to try. I can find an IR-pass filter, but I can’t remember the camera they used, and I can’t find the site now. Anybody know?
    ~
2

I, too, would love a thermal imager, but they’re very differerent technolgy from a video camera. Real thermal imagers are about $18,000 new, but I once saw one on the surplus market for about $5,000 (and it was SO tempting to max out my credit card to buy it, but…)

The only things I’ve ever seen that fit the description you’re talking about are variations on the Sony see-through-some-clothing cameras. You could make a “night vision” system that sees infrared that way, but that’s a long ways off from being able to sense the miniscule amounts of longwave IR produced by body heat, etc.

3

It’s true. While visible-light videocameras are usually better than the eye at seeing light that is just a bit past red into the near infrared, this only lets you see things glowing if they are maybe 500C or above. Adding a filter can only take something away.
But thermal imagers can be had new for $7000 or so that I am aware of. If you want one that’s also a video recorder, well, that’s much more.

4

Build your own from Kapton sheets and india ink (plus quite a bit of electronics hardware.)

$10 thermal imager
http://users.bestweb.net/~hobbs/