Equipment Thermal Imaging - The Want is Strong

Biggest problem you're going to have there is the same problem I have: it ain't the choice of camera, but figuring out how best to deal with differing thermal emissivity and reflectivity across the multi-material surface of a PCB. Otherwise you'll have a pretty picture with absolutely no usable data behind it.

 

I've found a midpoint between "paint it" and "dust it": Crack Detector Developer. It's basically a slurry of zinc oxide in naphtha. Spray it on, the naphtha evaporates, leaves a coating of zinc oxide behind - and you can wash the zinc oxide off afterwards with isoprop and a bit of elbow grease. You never quite get it out of *every* nook and cranny, but it's good enough!

 

That was quick:

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Postage is saying 1-8 weeks, mind, so it could still be a while before it's in my sweaty mitts.

 

This:

(DirtyPCBs branched out a while back and does on-demand 3D printing with no MOV now. Decapping and die-shots, too, if that's your bag!)

 

3D doodad shipped - let's hope the delivery is closer to the one-week estimate than the eight-week estimate!

 

Doodad get!



Going to pull out the camera and give it a whirl now. Fingers crossed I don't end up accidentally unscrewing the whole lens assembly!

EDIT:
It's a little fiddly - has a tendency to pop out of the lens assembly, and adjustment is pretty stiff (presumably deliberately so, given it's not actually supposed to be adjustable outside a factory setting) - but it definitely works.

Remember this?



Well, that now looks something like this:



Bit of an improvement, I'd say!

(It's a slightly unfair comparison, 'cos I've washed the gunk off the Pi Zero since the first picture. The metal bits are false detail from reflection and different emissivity, but you can see from the mounting holes and the GPIO pins that there's also a real difference in clarity.)

Cheers, @edzieba - now I just need to work out why it's started having trouble with its USB connection since last time it was out of the box...

 

A quick test of blending with a visible-light image:



Needed a bit of fiddling 'cos it's quite sensitive to different heights, and the finished result is very quick and dirty - it's the default iron palette rather than my preferred high-contrast rainbow and the board under the camera was, again, not treated, plus I didn't remove the shadow from the bottom of the board - but it proves the concept: I can indeed use the thing instead of the C2 for overview stuff.

It's still struggling a bit with USB connectivity, for some reason - keeps disconnecting and reconnecting itself. I'm sure it wasn't doing that last time I was using it. That's unrelated to the lens-focusing games, mind you!

 

Linux, but without any drivers installed (well, without any third-party drivers: both the cameras I've got just expose themselves as a USB Mass Storage Device and a V4L-compatible webcam.)

 

I'm actually writing this up now, so I needed better comparison shots - which means getting out the crack detector and spray-painting a Pi.

Before doodad:



After doodad:



Ta-da!

EDIT: Oh, and whatever was up with the USB connection seems to have resolved itself, 'cos it's staying connected nicely now.

 

After doodad *and* post-processing. Purty!

 

Oh, and by way of comparison here's a similar shot - different scale, though - taken on the FLIR C2.


You can really see the extra resolution on the ETS320: there are individual header holes instead of a single grouped lump, the outer edge hugs a lot more closely especially where the ports and microSD are, the mounting holes are more detailed...

That's what going from 80x60 to 320x240 does for you!