The Hottest Camera in Town

There are many fascinating uses for technology that allows us to see beyond the spectrum of visible light. Consider the applications that are made possible by peering at infrared radiation, for example. By rendering infrared radiation as visible light, firefighters can look through smoke and darkness to locate people trapped inside a burning building, or thermal leaks can be found to better winterize a home and reduce energy costs.

These are exactly the types of applications that thermal cameras are designed for. However, commercial thermal cameras — those with decent resolution, anyway — tend to be quite expensive. Hobbyist-grade cameras tend to be less expensive, but they can be difficult to work with, and they generally do not have high-resolution sensors. A device called PureThermal 3 could be the perfect middle ground that many have been waiting for — a relatively inexpensive thermal camera that has high resolution and is as easy to use as a standard webcam.

PureThermal 3 is a carrier board for a FLIR Lepton camera core. It is compatible with all current 2.x and 3.x Lepton cores. Once the sensor is seated into the open socket on the board, all one needs to do is plug the USB-C cable into a computer and open a standard application that is meant for use with any USB webcam. But rather than displaying a normal image, PureThermal 3 will be streaming images representing the heat signature that it senses.

The board is powered by an STMicroelectronics STM32F412 ARM microcontroller. The included open source firmware allows the PureThermal 3 to be used as a thermal webcam, but it was designed to be hackable. It is possible to write custom firmware to use this board for special purposes, like on-board image processing, and there are also a number of available GPIO pins that can be used to control other hardware components as part of a larger system.

PureThermal 3 works with Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. And don’t worry, hackers — there is also support for using the device with Raspberry Pi computers.

Coming in at $120, PureThermal 3 is not cheap, but that is not bad at all in the world of thermal imaging. You will, of course, need a FLIR Lepton camera core as well. A very capable core can be purchased for about $160, keeping the total cost under $300. That is perhaps a bit too pricey for the casual hobbyist. But if you have a great project idea that you have been unable to build due to cost, PureThermal 3 might be the solution.