Review: InfiRay Thermal P2 Pro USB-C Camera for Android
android camera infrared review tech · 8 comments · 550 words · read ~510 times.
The good folks at InfiRay have sent me their latest Infrared camera to review. It is tiny.
It's smaller than a normal USB stick and barely weighs anything. Shove the USB-C protrusion into your Android phone, launch the app, and... nope - that's it! Pretty much instantly plug and play.
There's also a reasonably long USB-C extension cable, so you can poke the camera in small places without needing to get your phone up close to something hot. But, if you do want to get close, the magnetic cover acts as a macro lens. Perfect for seeing which capacitor on your motherboard is about to blow!
Image Quality
The IR lens is only 256x192. It doesn't sound like a lot, but that's quite high spec for these sort of consumer devices. Everything is upscaled - and there's an overlay to show you the temperatures. Here's my face - what a cold nose!
There's no IR EXIF, sadly, but you do get GPS.
Video
The video is upscaled to 1080x1440 - which allows for the information overlay to be a sensible size. Frame rate is about 11fps - but we're not going for cinematic quality here! Codec is h264 but fairly uncompressed.
There doesn't seem to be a way to get rid of the InfiRay watermark - but perhaps it is burried in the app settings somewhere?
App
The Android app is spartan, but functional. You can fiddle around with the camera's colour pallets, play with some image and video quality settings, and record video.
It's also possible to show your phone's camera simultaneously with the thermal image - so you can get an idea of what you're seeing.
Linux Nerds
The camera shows up as 0bda:5830 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. USB Camera and is automatically recognised as a USB camera.
The only issue is with the way it presents itself. Opening up Google Meet shows the image split like this:
No idea what's going on there! But it should be easy enough to stream from the camera and post-process it.
Price
Now, here's the rub. What with the global chip shortages and the need for IR sensors in military equipment, the price of these devices is unfairly high.
The price on Amazon is around £220 - use the code terence12 to get a discount. That's a chunk of change! But these cameras are useful if you want to check for leaks, or dodgy insulation, or whether your computer is overheating.
You can also buy from the official website.
I've reviewed several IR cameras. The P2 Pro is a great gadget. It's small, the app doesn't suck, and it seems pretty accurate.
It's a bargain if a group of you are buying it for a hack-lab.
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Hardware I miss from my old Android phones
@Edent it’s nice to see IR cameras slowly coming down in price. It looks like they’re inching closer to a point that makes sense for the occasional use I would have.
Some local environmental groups have them to hire to let you check your home insulation, something that’s easier to do in the winter. One feature they’re keen on is the ability to fix the colour range, looking at the website for this it looks like it might do that, can you confirm it?
Mcgrady says:
Yes it had like more than 10 colors to choose in the setting. Really funny to see the object with a different color option!!
That green image at the end is going to eat my soul.
@Edent I've tinkered with my FLIR One, and also watched a bunch of people go by at the thermal camera exhibit at our local museum ... and you're the only other person I've seen who has a consistently cold nose like I do.
Broke my nose in my 20s, so I thought it might be that, and Googling reveals a number of potential causes. Curious!
Tobi says:
The lower image is the temperature data. You can find some ffmpeg commands and analysis in this thread. https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/infiray-and-their-p2-pro-discussion/?all Also there are some projects on GitHub which reverse engineered the usb protocol e.g. https://github.com/LeoDJ/P2Pro-Viewer
Jakub says:
Hello guys, I am deciding between P2 Pro and Topdon TC001. I wonder if they can be connected straight to my phone due to phone protective case. There is ring around USB-C connector on P2 Pro so it might help. any experience please?
Thanks
@edent says:
In my experience, the P2 had a slightly longer than normal USB connector. But it you have a thick case, you may need an extension cable.
Suze says:
Included with the InfiRay P2 is a USB-C extension cable 30cm long which is the most practical way to connect the camera to a phone. There is also a WINDOWS software on the manufacturers website - so one can also use a laptop or other device operating on WINDOWS For those computers that do not have a USB-C port - USB-A (Male) to USB-C (FeMale) is available on AMAZON
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