Whereas previous cameras are good for bird watching, or wildlife spotting, or finding leaks at home - the P3 has a manual macro lens and is specifically designed for getting close-up and personal with your electronics.

Yup! See just how hot your CPU is getting 🥵

Let's take it for a spin!

Unboxing

As well as the camera (which looks gorgeous with its gold trim) you get a carry-case, USB-C extension cable, and a Lightning converter for older iPhones.

The metal casing of the camera feels delightful and gives it a bit of heft. The focus wheel is reasonably stiff which makes it easier to position just right.

Sample Photos

These are the raw images taken directly from the app. I haven't resized or altered them in any way. What you see is what you get. Here's a hot-spot on a circuit board:

The natural size of the images is 1344x1008. That's obviously upscaled from the sensor, but there's a surprisingly amount of detail in there.

Here's a small circuit board which has just booted up:

Where the P3 shines is when you twist the manual lens all the way down to macro. You can get about 2cm away from a surface and stay in focus.

Obviously don't get that close to something red hot!

Annoyingly, the images are uncompressed JPEG and weigh in around 6MB each. I've losslessly compressed these to WebP, which is about 10% of the size.

Colours

There are a variety of different colour palettes to play with. Some are more useful than others. Here's a mug of hot and delicious matcha rendered in the various colours:

Scrolling through the colours is a little difficult in the app (more on that later) but once you've found one you like, it stays that way for the photography session.

EXIF

Geolocation is taken from the phone - there's no GPS chip in the camera. You can refuse location permission to the app and it will work just fine.

That's just about all you get other than the time and the model name of USB_IR_RS300_P2L - the infrared details aren't recorded separately.

Video

The video doesn't upsample the image, it has a resolution of 504x672 playing at 25fps. Audio is recorded from the phone's microphone and is 64kbps mono. A minute of video is around 22MB. I've recompressed this one for the web.

The App

It is, sadly, an inevitability that good hardware is always accompanied by a substandard app. The Thermal Master Android App is the only way to access the camera. It has a relatively easy to use interface with plenty of options.

As you can see from the word "brightness" the UI is a little janky in places.

There's a decent amount of settings to fiddle with.

You can also change which elements get displayed on the final image.

Unfortunately, it is also a bit crash-happy. Most times I used it, the app would randomly close. It takes a little while to re-open thanks to a mandatory animation. So it gets a bit annoying. Flicking through some of the options can be slow and tedious. It also doesn't respect the phone's orientation, so images may be 90⁰ off what you expect.

The app updated the firmware on the camera, but didn't say what had changed.

It takes photos and videos, allows you to share them, and has a bunch of options to play with - but it does have a habit of crashing just when you're about to take the perfect shot. There is also zoom available, but it is digital only - so you're just making the pixels bigger rather than getting optically closer to the object you're scanning.

Linux Info

I tried plugging it in to a Linux laptop. It shows up as 3474:45a2 Thermal Master Technology Co., Ltd. P3 - but that's about it. There's no way I can find to access the thermal images.

To be fair, this is explicitly sold as an Android and iOS device. I'm hopeful someone will be able to reverse engineer it.

Cost and Final Thoughts

Thermal cameras are expensive. This will run you about £280 on Amazon or about £260 direct. Readers of this blog can get 10% off using code THERMALBF10

If you run a hackspace, this is a no-brainer. The ability to see hot-spots on your circuits is immediately useful. The detail is impressive, allowing you to see exactly what's causing problems.

If you're a hobbyist, this is definitely in the "ask Santa if you've been good" category. You'll find it handy on any small projects you have, or to diagnose faults with electrical equipment.

For non-macro uses, it's also pretty good. You might be better off with a dedicated device if you want to go hunting wildlife or doing home surveys.

The only fly in the ointment is the app. While somewhat customisable, it does repeatedly crash and it isn't the easiest to use or set up. I found that pretty frustrating and have fed back the problem to the developers. I appreciate it saving high quality images - but a PNG or lossless WebP would be easier to work with than massive JPGs.

Ultimately, this is an excellent thermal camera. It looks lush, it is customisable, the images are high quality, and the macro-lens is surprisingly useful.

The T2 Max is a chunky little camera - but doesn't weight too much. The USB-C connector is long enough to securely plug in even if your phone is wearing a case.

Thermal Master boasts that this is the "world's smallest thermal monocular" - and it is easy to believe. The lens is comparatively huge, but the total package size is tiny.

In the box you get the camera module with rubber lens cover, a short extension lead, a Lightning adapter, and a handy carry case which is well-padded and has a carabiner clip.

The focus is manually adjustable. Gently twist the lens until you can clearly see what it is pointed at.

Wanna see some photos?

Photos

These are the original photos, untouched. Annoyingly, the images are rotated 90°, so I've fixed that. I've also removed the geolocation.

Photos are 1008x1344 pixels. Of course, that's massively upscaled - still, the level of detail is impressive.

Here's a cat I spotted.

Turning on the X3 enhanced mode, and you can see the amount of extra detail it extracts.

There's a variety of thermal modes. Particularly effective is this one which highlights heat in green and lets the rest of the image fade away. Very good for birdwatching.

The zoom is relatively impressive, and the picture-in-picture mode allows you to see an optical image as well as thermal. Here's the moon.

Videos

Video is about 25MB per minute with a resolution of 672x504. Here's a re-encoded video showing off the various thermal modes, focuses, etc.

Your device's microphone can be used to record an audio track. That's useful for giving commentary on what you're seeing. I've stripped it out because you don't need to hear me chatting to the cat.

The camera can pick up a remarkable amount of detail - although the zoom is digital rather than optical.

Framerate starts off well but, as you can see, degrades a bit. I suspect that's the app's fault. It's a real shame because the phone screen seems to display a silky-smooth frame rate.

Android App

Once you've installed the Thermal Master app, you can set it to open as soon as the camera is plugged in.

The app takes a bit of getting used to. There's no direct on-screen "take photo" button, you have to open it up from a menu, which is a little annoying.

There are a decent amount of options to fiddle about with. Because USB-C is bidirectional, the camera can either face you or away from you. If you swap orientation you'll need to adjust the settings.

It also has a "Picture in Picture" mode which overlays the thermal image with what your device's regular camera is seeing. That's handy in daytime, but a bit pointless at night.

Sadly, the app is a bit crap. It crashed several times while I was using it.

The interface isn't brilliant and you'll find yourself taking several taps to do anything basic.

iOS Support

No idea. It should work with newer USB-C iPhones. It also comes with an adapter for older Lightning port devices.

Linux Support

Nope. I tried using the extension cable and plugging it directly into my computer's USB-C ports. I got this series of errors from dmesg:

device descriptor read/64, error -32
attempt power cycle
new full-speed USB device number 17 using xhci_hcd
Device not responding to setup address.
device not accepting address 17, error -71
WARN: invalid context state for evaluate context command.
unable to enumerate USB device

I rotated the cable, and it showed up as 3474:41b2 Thermal Master Technology Co., Ltd. T2 Max. I suspect that it doesn't have the internal resistors needed to signal that it is a USB 2 device - and the included extension cable is wired to only provide them on one orientation. Even after all that, I couldn't get it working in any standard Linux tools.

To be fair, it isn't marketed as being suitable for computer use. It explicitly says iPhone and Android only. Ah well!

Price

Thermal Cameras are expensive - even more so when they're miniaturised like this. So, brace yourself, it is on sale for £320!

Readers can use the code THERMBIRD10 for 10% off at Thermal Master website, or Amazon UK, or Amazon.com.

Final Thoughts

If you spend a lot of time looking for wildlife, The T2 Max is a decent bit of kit. It is small, lightweight, and easy to integrate with your phone.

The app is a real let down. It isn't exactly the zenith of interaction design - but you'll find your way round it easily enough. The real problem is the frequent crashes an the lapses in frame-rate while recording video.

Because of the design of the lens, it isn't great for domestic tasks like spotting leaks & hotspots. For that you'll want something like the Hikmicro unit I reviewed last week.

Being able to shove it into your phone means that it can easily integrate into your workflow. You can edit, crop, and post images just as you normally do. For such a small device, you get a lot of image - and the on-board processing is excellent.

Sadly, the zoom is digital, rather than optical. All you're doing is blowing up pixels rather than getting closer to the subject.

The image quality is exquisite but the Android app is a real let down. If you're prepared to put up with a baffling interface and occasional crashes, you'll get some fine photos and videos out of it.

Despite the no-fills appearance, it packs in a lot of features which put some more expensive models to shame. It even works with Linux. Shove in a USB-C cable to grab the photos or even use it as a webcam.

All the images you see in this post are unaltered. I haven't optimised them or stripped the metadata; what you see is what you get.

Let's go!

Specs and Pictures

Infrared cameras usually have tiny sensors - the D02 is no different, you get 96x96 pixels of thermal information upscaled to 240x240.

Where the D02 shines is that it also has an optical camera just below the thermal sensor. This allows the camera to combine both the thermal and optical images into one "fusion" image.

Here's an example of the thermal image:

The optical image has a higher resolution - 480x640:

It isn't the highest quality lens in the world, but more than adequate for seeing what's going on.

Once fused, the image looks like this:

With the two images overlayed, you get a reasonably clear photo. The visual shows a good amount of detail and the thermal image shows what's hot.

It mostly works. If you're pointing at something very close to the sensor then you'll end up with a slightly surreal image like this which show the two out of alignment.

Storage is limited to around 2.5GB with no SD card slot. But given that photos are typically less than 150KB, you'll fit tens of thousands on there before worrying about running out of space.

Videos

Videos are a bit bigger, about 12MB per minute in MP4 format. But, again, you'll be able to store a couple of hours of footage on there without worry.

Again, 240x240 upscaled. Good enough for domestic use. No audio. What you see is what you get.

EXIF

There's not much useful EXIF - just the timestamp and camera serial number. That said, all the images and videos are placed in the DCIM folder which should make importing them easier.

Some other cameras provide the "raw" thermal data separately - but that's only really useful if you're doing analysis on the data, rather than trying to spot hot / cold spots.

Features

There are a few other nifty features. You can set a schedule to allow it to take pictures periodically - handy if you use the tripod attachment point to place it in a static location.

You can change the type of thermal image taken - there are various palettes available depending on what you're interested in.

There are various emissivity profiles depending on what you're pointing at:

You can also fiddle with the distance setting depending on how close you are to the subject. There's also an alarm setting to warn you if something is too hot or too cold.

Finally, you can view back the images and videos on the device. Handy if you can't get to a computer and want to show someone what you've spotted.

SuperScene AI

Everything needs AI in it nowadays. Thankfully, the D02 doesn't chat to you - instead it can analyse photos for potential problems. There are a range of build-in "SuperScene" modes available once you update to the latest firmware.

I simulated a water leak under my sink and pointed the camera at it:

As you can see, it draws a red outline around anything it thinks is suspicious and draws a little water droplet icon in the lower left corner. It also set the colour profile, to make things easier to see. It isn't the most powerful AI model that I've ever used, but is certainly handy for checking things around the home.

User Interface

There's a trigger. Press it once to take a photo. Hold it down to start / stop recording. Pretty much idiot proof.

The rest is a bit flimsy. A combined power / select button, a back button, then up & down arrows. The arrows confused me for a while. Press the up one to change the type of photo you're taking, the down one changes the colour scheme.

There's no touch-screen, haptic feedback, speaker, or anything expensive like that.

Linux and Open Source

Works fine as a storage device on Linux, showing up as 0525:a4a5 "Netchip Technology, Inc. Linux-USB File-backed Storage Gadget". True to its word, it shows up as a standard disk.

Most hardware manufacturers from China ignore their Open Source obligations - but not HIKMICRO. There's a rather prominent menu item in the settings screen which lets you scroll through an almost endless parade of software names and their licences. A bonus star for that!

You can also turn on diagnostic logging - that'll slowly fill the disk with log files:

[07-21 14:47:40][pid:477][tid:642][GUI][ERROR][minigui_lcd_dsp_update][line:1393] KEY_OK_MSG minigui_lcd_dsp_update GUI_TM_DATA_CAPTURE...

Probably not overly useful unless you've got a problem.

Webcam

On plugging in the camera via USB-C, the screen gives a choice of "USB Drive" or "USB Cast Screen". Toggling to the screen option transforms the device into 2bdf:017f a "UVC Camera". In theory, you should be able to use it as a standard WebCam and show others what the D02 is seeing. I couldn't get it to work with Chrome or Firefox directly.

Using qv4l2 I was able to open it as an MJPG stream once I set the resolution to 240x320.

For those of a technical bent, here's what v4l2-ctl showed as the available formats:

ioctl: VIDIOC_ENUM_FMT
    Type: Video Capture

    [0]: 'MJPG' (Motion-JPEG, compressed)
        Size: Discrete 240x320
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
        Size: Discrete 320x240
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)
    [1]: 'YUYV' (YUYV 4:2:2)
        Size: Discrete 640x256
            Interval: Discrete 0.033s (30.000 fps)

Price

Infrared cameras are annoyingly expensive. This one is around £190 - although currently discounted to £170 - which is fairly reasonable.

How much will it save you? Well, it can tell you where your insulation isn't working - or which plugs are about to burst into flames; so a decent investment.

Final Thoughts

I've reviewed a lot of thermal cameras and I think this might be one of my favourites. The fact that it (optionally) captures both the thermal and the optical image makes it great for diagnosing problems because you can easily see what it is you're looking at.

There are enough settings to fiddle around with to keep most tinkerers happy and the image quality is more than good enough for spotting problems in the home. It's well worth buying for your home if you want to check for leaks, insulation gaps, hotspots, and other domestic problems. I'd recommend sharing the cost with your neighbours, or loaning it to a local tool library.

This is lightweight, quick to boot up, has good accuracy, and is (relatively) cheap. Well worth it, in my opinion.

Straight away you can see it is different from normal IR cameras - they tend to have a small fixed screen and a rubber button interface. This has a lush touchscreen which displays the thermal image and is used to control the camera. The screen can go bright enough to be easily visible in full daylight, and you can dim it down to something more appropriate for night-time viewing.

OK, enough waffle, time to get snapping!

Photos

Here are some shots from the camera of various bits of wildlife near me. I haven't edited these images, they're exactly what you get from the camera.

The resolution is 512x384. There's no EXIF metadata - so no location information.

There's also no in-picture thermal gradient so you can't see the exact temperature of an object. This is designed for spotting animals, not working out how hot your electronics are. The datetime is burned in to the image but can be turned off.

It has the ability to almost totally remove the background "noise" of the sky - making it excellent for spotting things on the wing.

Filesize is about 20KB per photo. So you can fit will over a million images on the ~32GB internal storage. Digital zoom goes up to 8X.

Videos

The static images don't really do it justice. It's also possible to shoot video. This gives you a reasonable idea of what you'll see on the touchscreen.

Video resolution is the same as the photos - 512x384 - and runs at 30fps. File size is around 40MB per minute. So about 12 hours of footage can be stored. I've re-encoded these videos to be smaller while keeping the same quality.

Here's a friendly fox I found - I've cycled through the various settings so you can see how they work.

Again, as with the photos, there's no metadata and the datetime is burned in. Here are a couple of cats playing around in the park.

Twisting the lens allows you to adjust the focus - it is really impressive the amount of detail it can pick up.

There's no video stabilisation (use the tripod mount if you need it) and there's no audio.

RTSP

You can also stream the video to a computer, VLC, or anything else which will take an RTSP stream.

The URl will be rtsp://[IP Address]:8554/ch0 - that will get you a 20fps stream of exactly what the camera is seeing.

Range and Detection

It reckons it'll detect a human's heat signature from around 900 metres away.

There are several modes which will let you see more or less detail. That's particularly important if you're just interested in the hottest part of the image, or if you need to photograph something against a relatively warm background.

The App

This'll pair with your Android phone using the Thermal Masters app. It's a bit of a beast - around 200MB. That's because it's the same app for all their cameras and contains PDFs for several different models. Despite the relatively high download numbers, it has zero reviews.

Like lots of software from hardware manufacturers, the app is basic but serviceable. It connects to your DV2 via WiFi. You can either be on the same network or connect the camera to your phone's hotspot.

Looking through the app's code, it appears to use OpenCV, ffmpeg, and some other popular Open Source libraries. Sadly, the required attribution is missing.

The app is great for monitoring the camera, you can zoom in on the image and fiddle with some of the settings. But you can't actually trigger a photo or video recording! That's a bit annoying.

Linux

For our penguin powered friends, this shows up as 1f3a:1000 "Allwinner Technology Prestigio PER3464B ebook reader (Mass storage mode)". It's a basic drive which lets you copy the media back to your computer via USB-C. Easy as.

Comparison

So how does it compare to the Topdon TS004 Thermal Camera? The Topdon is also marketed at the bird-spotting crowd and, on the surface, has fairly similar features.

The most obvious difference is the user interface. The TS004 is a Monocular - so you need to shove your eye into the end to see anything.

With the DV2, you've got a big screen to look at - which is generally much more pleasant. That display of the DV2 is a touchscreen which makes it pretty easy to interact with - whereas with the TS004 you have to repeatedly mash buttons to change any settings.

In terms of resolution, both have a standard 256×192 sensor. The upscaling on the DV2 is good - but doesn't fundamentally change how much thermal information there is.

But it is the thoughtful little extras which make the DV2 useful. There's a built-in laser pointer which is useful for working out exactly what you're aiming at. At the bottom is a standard tripod mount, so you can rig it up somewhere to monitor an area.

Slightly bizarrely, it comes with an optional Picatinny Rail adaptor. That screws into the side of your DV2 and allows you to add firearm accessories! So if you ever wanted to add a sniper scope to your thermal camera…

Alright, a regular range-finder will also attach to it 😆

The battery is a bit of an odd one. You can physically remove the battery and place it in its own USB charger. The battery is a 1INR22/71 which is a chunky beast. The charger comes with two slots (although only one battery is included) so you can quick-swap to a full battery if you need to. There is a USB-C port on the bottom, if you want to charge it the normal way.

With the TS004, the only way to stream video was via the app. The DV2 will connect to any WiFi network and present an RTSP stream. The built in WiFi is useful for grabbing firmware updates.

The DV2 also suffers a little from the lack of a trigger button for taking photos. When held in the hand, it feels natural to click the button under the thumb finger - instead, that toggles the laser. Taking a photo means tapping away on the screen to get to a sub-menu. Annoyingly, your phone can't be used as a remote control.

One thing in the TS004's advantage - it's lens cap is attached to the body of the unit. The DV2's is a separate rubber cap which comes off completely. Best remember to stick it in the supplied carrying case, eh?

The TS004 also has built-in animal recognition. It can detect heat signatures and tell you if they're a bird or a human. However, it always misidentified English foxes as Wild Boars! So was of limited use.

The DV2 uses AI to upscale the quality of the images rather than trying to detect what it is actually looking at.

In general, the DV2 is easier to use and produces seemingly better quality media. But having to tap the screen multiple times to take a photo or video is slightly annoying.

Price

All the infrared cameras I've reviewed have been expensive. This one is no different. At the moment it is in stock for £459.

You can use the code THERMBIRD10 for 10% off at the official store or from Amazon.com.

That's a chunk of change - but you do get a lot of tech for the price. This isn't designed for finding hotspots in your home, it's excels at picking out wildlife - and the screen is big enough for several people to gather round to see what you've spotted.

Final Thoughts

This is one of the better thermal imaging devices that I've reviewed. The large touchscreen makes it so much easier to control than anything else on the market - all the others have squishy rubber buttons. It is mostly a delight to use, if you can put up with the slightly strange process of taking a photo.

Thermal cameras are still very expensive - the sensors are low resolution and sometimes flaky. The DV2 does a great job of producing a usable images and videos.

The app is no worse than the competition. It really ought to inform users about the use of Open Source code though.

The addition of the laser pointer isn't as gimmicky as I'd thought. I've no use for the Picatinny attachment, but I can see how it could be useful.

If you want to go wildlife spotting, this is probably the device to get. It captures an incredible amount of detail and is excellent at picking up the faintest heat signatures.

This is the TS004 Thermal Monocular:

Let's put it through its paces!

Hardware

This is a chunky bit of kit and fits nicely in the hand. It's well weighted and feels sturdy.

The rubber seal fits tightly around your eye and is excellent at keeping light out. The screen is set a little way back, so is easy to focus on. Taking a photo of the screen itself was a little tricky - here's what you can expect to see when using the settings menu:

The focus knob near the viewfinder is a little stiff, but it turns silently.

There's a rubber lens cover which is attached and can be easily tucked away next to the standard tripod mount. It comes with a lanyard strap, so you're unlikely to drop it. The buttons are well spaced and respond quickly.

The USB-C port has a rubber flap to keep out moisture.

OK, let's take some snaps!

Photos

Photo quality is pretty good - although limited by the technology behind the thermal sensor. The TS004 has a thermal resolution of 256x192 and images are upscaled to 640x480.

One thing to note, the user-interface is burned in to the photos. So if you want the battery display on screen, it will also appear on the photo. Similarly, things like the range-finder appear in the image.

There's a reasonable AI built in. It is designed to tell you what sort of wildlife you've spotted. In some cases, it is pretty accurate! A woman walked by me while I was looking for wildlife - here's her photo:

Nifty!

Here's a photo of a fox:

There are remarkably few wild boars in London!

Video

Video is also 640x480. It is a very smooth 42.187 FPS and a rather chunky 2,162 Kbps - leading to a file size of around 20MB per minute. With around 30GB of in-built storage, that shouldn't be a problem though. There's no audio available and, just like the photos, the UI is burned into the picture.

Here are a couple of sample videos I shot. In them, I cycle through the colour modes and zoom levels.

First, an urban fox foraging in London:

Second, some parakeets flapping around a tree:

I'm impressed with the smoothness of the video and how well it picks up heat even from relatively far away.

Linux

Bizarrely, on Linux it shows up as 1d6b:0101 Linux Foundation Audio Gadget. It presents as a standard USB drive and you can easily copy files to and from it. 100% compatibility!

You can't use it as a WebCam - for anything more complicated than copying files, you need to use the official app.

App

The TopInfrared App for Android is reasonably good. It connects to the camera via WiFi and offers some useful features. Most impressively, it live-streams the camera's view to your phone.

From there you can take photos or videos and have them saved straight onto your device. Handy if you've set the camera up outside and want to view it from somewhere warmer.

Frustratingly, it isn't possible to set all the options on the camera using the app. For that you need to go back to the menu on the camera - which is slightly laborious.

The app isn't mandatory for most operations - thankfully - but it is the only way to set the time and date on the monocular. You will also need it if there are any firmware updates.

If you don't need the app, you can turn off the WiFi to save some battery life.

Drawbacks

The device works - and is great for wildlife spotting - but there are a few little niggles. I've fed these back to the manufacturer and have included their responses.

• There's no EXIF in the photos, or any way to get thermal data out of the images.

  • "These products focus on image clarity, high sensitivity, and low latency. For example, temperature-measurement thermal cameras typically run at 25 Hz, while the TS004 operates at 50 Hz for smoother viewing. Devices that include EXIF temperature data, raw thermal export, and analytical tools are measurement-focused thermal cameras, which are based on a different design and use case."

• As mentioned, having the UI burned into the photos and videos is slightly annoying.

  • You can turn off the UI elements on screen which stops them appearing in the photo.

• The range-finder only works in yards and, while seemingly accurate, isn't overly helpful to those of us who think in metric!

  • "Unit switching will be available in the March firmware update"

• Once you sync the time with the monocular, all the filenames are timestamped like 2026_02_09_12345678 but it appears to be hardwired to Hong Kong Time (UTC+8) - so your dates and times might be a little out.

  • "We will investigate it and see if it can be implemented in a future update"

• The AI detection feature doesn't seem particularly tuned for the UK.

  • "Due to hardware limitations, the current recognition is relatively basic, so there is limited room for significant improvement"

In terms of hardware limitations, there's no GPS. I would expect a device in this price-range to have basic GPS functionality to allow you to easily tag photos.

None of these are show-stoppers, but for a device this expensive they are an annoyance.

Price

OK, so you want to spot birds in trees and wild boars foraging in the forest - what'll this cost you?

Close to £400 - you can use code TERENCE15 for a 15% discount until 16 February 2026.

The price of thermal imaging equipment is high and this is a fairly niche form-factor. It is easy to use, has a great range, and the rubber eyepiece is much nicer than staring at a bright phone screen. The battery life is excellent and you certainly can't complain about the generous storage space.

There are some minor irritations as discussed above, but it is an exceptional bit of kit if you like to explore the environment. Are you going to spot any cryptids with it? Who knows! But you'll have lots of fun discovering the natural world around you.

Topdon have sent me a mid-point model to review. It's relatively cheap for a thermal imaging product - only £140 on Amazon. I think the sensor is made by Raytrontek. But is it any good?

While it has a bunch of useful features, there's no video recording and it doesn't work with Linux. Other than that, it's fine.

The Good Points

It seems broadly accurate. Point it at a bunch of things and you can see their temperature. Here's my beautiful face:

That's the actual size of the file. Their marketing bumph says:

TISR (Thermal Image Super Resolution) uses AI algorithms to add simulated pixels between existing ones, enhancing low-resolution thermal images into clearer, high-resolution visuals.

Let's be honest, there's no AI in a device this cheap. There are various complex rules about Infrared cameras and their resolution. These images are fairly low quality - but more than good enough to help you spot a leak or work out if something is too hot.

Quick start up is great. It is ready to go a few seconds after pushing the power button.

The trigger grip is comfortable and responsive - it makes the whole device very "point-and-shoot".

There's a standard tripod screw fitting at the bottom.

The camera is at a slight angle from the grip, so you'll need a tripod with a tiltable mount. You also get an lanyard in the box, which is easily secured to the device.

There's a file-browser built in - which also lets you delete photos.

USB-C for charging and data transfer. Same as all your other gadgets, I hope!

But…

Resolution is low. That's normal for these sorts of cameras, but because the output is only 240x320 it means the on-screen text is cramped and looks pretty poor.

The interface is basic. It doesn't look brilliant, but it is usable.

Setting the time, for example, is a bit of a pain:

Once you've gone in to set the time and other basic settings, you'll probably never go back to it.

Storage space is low - only 480MB. To be fair, images are under 100KB, so you could store several thousand before you hit a problem.

There's no video recording. That's a bit of an arse if you want to see how something heats over time.

You can't extract temperature information from the images. There's no EXIF, no standard metadata, just whatever is printed over the photo. Again, good enough for a quick check but, given the small viewable size of the images, it would have been nice to print the information separately. You can remove some of the on-screen elements from the image. Here's my air-conditioning unit:

The rubber flap protecting the charging port makes it difficult to insert the cable.

Because the port is on the top of the device, it's sensible to protect it from debris, but it is a bit fiddly to use.

Linux Information

This shows up as 3474:0020 Raysentek Co.,Ltd Raysentek MTP. In theory, it should just show up as a device in your file explorer. But it doesn't work.

I couldn't detect anything with mtp-device - it didn't show up. dmesg showed the dreaded device not accepting address 53, error -71 which, I think, indicates a power problem.

lsusb -v shows it claims to support Picture Transfer Protocol.

I reset the device, formatted its memory, used different cables and ports, restarted everything, I even tried it on my Android phone. Nothing.

Which rather puts a damp squib on things. If you can't get the images off the device, you're stuck peering at them on a tiny screen with no way to share them with others.

It will work with Windows. I tried it in VirtualBox and it showed up - albeit with the name "Cobra".

Verdict

For a quick and dirty inspection, this is a perfectly fine little device. Point it at a thing and see how hot it is. Squeeze the trigger and capture the image for later viewing.

The tripod attachment is handy and there are enough settings hidden away for you to set it up for your own personal needs.

The buttons feel a bit crap and flap gets in the way of the USB-C charging port.

It doesn't work with Linux or Android - I wasn't able to test it on a Mac - so make sure you have Windows available for getting the images off it.

This is one of the cheapest stand-alone thermal cameras you can buy. Necessarily, there are compromises involved with things at this price-point. The camera works (albeit not with Linux) and is a great way to get started with Infrared photography and monitoring.

Let's get this unboxed and working!

Demo

Photos

The photos are stored as JPGs which can be read by any normal graphics program. They also contain the thermal metadata which you can extract with specialist tools.

Here's the full photo taken with the camera. It shows the interior of an office with some computer equipment on a shelf.

You aren't going to get high-resolution photos out of this - 256x192 is what the thermal sensor provides. That's overlayed on a graphic.

It includes different filters so you can see just the thermals, the real image, or a mix of the two.

Because the optical camera is quite some distance from the thermal camera, it doesn't cope well with close ups - as you can see. Luckily, this can be adjusted in the UI by pressing the up and down keys.

Videos

As well as static shots, it will take video - 240x320 resolution and 25fps - well, ish. It looks a bit jerkier than that to me. But it is good enough to see what's going on.

In this video, I've recorded a bath filling up. Towards the end, I've changed the settings so it shows more of the real-colour video with the heat overlayed.

Filesize is about 1.5MB per minute - I've recompressed it for upload. I couldn't see any specific thermal metadata in the video.

Linux

Amusingly, it shows up as 1f3a:1000 Allwinner Technology Prestigio PER3464B ebook reader (Mass storage mode). Nevertheless, the 30GB volume was mountable and had an IMGS/ directory full of JPGs.

There is a Windows app, which I was able to run in PlayOnLinux. It offers a few features, such as being able to change the colour scheme of the photo, and pick out specific temperature points.

What's Great

The integrated lens-cap is is a thoughtful touch. As is the hand-strap and included padded case.

The trigger action feels great and is instantly responsive. There are a bunch of menu options if you like to fiddle with things.

Oh, and it is USB-C! So it will take the same charging and data transfer cable as all your other gadgets.

Overall, a nice package.

Downsides

The button layout is a little odd. The buttons feel nice and are responsive. But I would have expected the "Enter" button to be in the centre of the directional buttons.

It is a little slow booting up - but then, this isn't designed for quick action shots.

After taking a photo or a video, it asks if you want to save it every time. That's a little annoying. There's 30GB of storage and photos are only about 300KB - so it should be good for about 100,000 photos.

The videos are recorded without sound. A cheap microphone would make it easy to narrate what's going on in a shot.

Weirdly, the bundled app doesn't work on videos.

There's no expandable storage - the 30GB is plenty, but sometimes it is easier to shove an SD card into a computer.

Finally, there's no mounting point. Other cameras I've tried have a connector so they can be attached to a tripod. This is strictly hand-held only.

Verdict

This costs £200 - £250 depending on whether the algorithm likes you. Astonishingly, that's cheap for a thermal camera of this quality!

If you're into DIY, or you want to check the thermal efficiency of your home, or you just want to see how hot things are - this is a useful bit of kit. It's sturdy and well built. Dragging images and videos off it is a breeze - even if you don't use the official app.

The interface isn't the greatest thing in the world. But all you need to do is point and click. It's the sort of thing that's unexpectedly handy around the house with all sorts of tasks - from checking if the radiators are balanced, to seeing if a hidden plug is spewing heat.

£200ish isn't cheap cheap. But it is cheap enough that most geeks should have something like this. Also worth buying for community groups who want to check for heat leaks in their properties.

If you are happy with the slight user-interface oddities, and don't need a tripod mount, this is an excellent gadget.

Readers of this blog can use coupon code TEB15 for an exclusive 15% discount.

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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.

I have a new Thermal Imaging camera. It automatically saves photos in two formats. The first is a standard JPEG with false colours and metadata superimposed.

The second is a .irg file which can only be opened by the Windows-only software which comes with the camera.

Judging from what that software shows, the .irg contains a raw thermal image and separate metadata. That makes it more useful for analysis.

What I know (not much!)

Here's what I can find out about this undocumented file format.

Every .irg file is exactly 131,080 bytes. I presume that means the image is stored as an uncompressed array of pixels - the thermal sensor is only 256x192. And I also guess that it has fixed length fields for metadata?

Each file has a different MD5 hash - so these are unique.

I couldn't identify the images with the standard Linux tools of identify, strings, file, or exiftool. Thermal Imaging tools like ThermImageJ weren't able to read them.

Running binwalk showed that there was a JPEG at 0x1FAC0 until the end of the file. Each .irg had exactly the same JPEG attached:

An unexciting, 180x240, 1,352 byte, lump of green. There's no exif in it.

A hexdump shows that all the .irg files start with the same header:

0000000 0bb0 0080 a8c0 0000 00f0 00b4 c000 00a8
0000010 f000 b400 0000 a8c0 0000 00f0 00b4 251c
0000020 0000 7e7c 002d 7e7c 002d 1388 0000 0fa0
0000030 0000 2710 0000 0000 0000 2710 0000 0000
0000040 0000 0000 0000 0004 0000 0002 0000 0000
0000050 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

That doesn't look like any file signature I recognise.

The metadata on the software's PDF manual showed it was written by Infiray. They don't have any details on their site and haven't responded to my emails.

My knowledge of comparing hexdumps and trying to interpret them is lacking. It looks to me like there is a bunch of regular data in there, but I wasn't able to make head nor tale of it.

There are some articles about decoding these sorts of files but I wasn't able to apply that knowledge.

Your turn

Well gang, I'm stumped! Here is a zip with 5 JPEGs and their corresponding 5 .irg files.

If you can decipher how they work, or get me any closer to an open source viewer, please let me know!

Progress

James has a quick scrap of Python to extract the black and white image.

I think that's just from the visual sensor, rather than the thermal sensor - but it's a start!

Further Update!

Phil has completely reverse engineered it!

I've just been sent the TopDon TC004 handheld thermal camera to review. It's a chunky beast of a device. About the same size as a large barcode scanner - and pretty weighty. It promises superb thermal imaging, video recording, and a host of useful features. But how does it do? And, more importantly, how well does it work with Linux?

Overview

The UI is simple. Squeeze the trigger and it takes a photo. Hold the trigger and it shoots video.

The trigger has a satisfying action. The other UI buttons are a bit rubbery but do the job well enough.

There are bunch of options to fiddle with - you can change the colour scheme for the photos and a few other odds and sods.

It dumps out JPG images, and H264 video. It also produces .irg files which appear to be a proprietary file format containing the infrared data - more on that later.

There's a built-in torch, which is handy if you're looking in darkened corners. There's also a screw port for a standard tripod.

All-in-all, it's a great feeling product with a bunch of useful features.

Gallery

Here's a sample video. You can see that it can detect the residual warmth of my feet on the floor:

Here's Liz getting some food out of the freezer. I think it's impressive how much detail it has captured across the range:

Our gas boiler, with pipes emanating.

How much hotter is an Amazon Alexa than the ambient temperature of our kitchen? Quite a bit!

And, the obligatory selfie. Possibly useful for seeing if someone has an elevated temperature.

Linux Info

I was delighted that this was the epitome of plug-and-play on Linux.

In USB Mass Storage mode, it showed up as 0525:a4a5 Netchip Technology, Inc. Linux-USB File-backed Storage Gadget and exposed a single DCIM folder which was full of JPGs.

In the settings menu is the option to turn it into a glorified webcam. I flicked it on, rebooted, plugged in and... it just worked! Showed up as 12d1:0000 Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. MCamera

I fired up Google Meet and was able to join my boring conference calls in exciting heat-vision.

Software

There's a Windows-only piece of software for managing the camera called TD View. Using PlayOnLinux it installs and runs. Although, on startup, it will all be in Chinese.

Once that was changed to English, it becomes fairly obvious how to use it. Point it at a folder full of images and you get a gallery

I wasn't able to get the software talking directly to the camera - but it can read and manipulate the weird .irg files.

Using the software is the only way to get the images without a superimposed timestamp on them.

Price

Brace yourself... It's four hundred quid! If you're going to be using it constantly, I dare say that's a pretty good price. Spending every day looking for leaks, hot wires, and the like will see it pay for itself quickly. If you're a DIYer... well, you've probably got more expensive gadgets that you rarely use, right?!

It's the sort of thing that would be a great present for a community or gadget library. Being able to show every house on your street where they would benefit from insulation would be excellent value for money.

If you're a gadget freak like me, you'll enjoy the novelty of having yet-another USB-C gadget which will be used for an as-yet-undetermined project.

Downsides

Other than the price, there's not a lot to complain about. The UI is passable, with only a few weird translations.

There are a few technical glitches. Videos as saved with a file extension of .h264 - they're MP4 files but might not be detected as such. The video resolution is reported as 1280x720, so appears distorted.

There's no EXIF on the images. Nor is their any GPS. It would be nice if the video recorded sound - but it is silent. The frame rate is low - but you're not exactly making IMAX videos on this.

It's a bit annoying that photos are stamped with the battery level and date / time. It's possible to get the raw images from the .irg files using their software - but I wish a more standard file format had been used.

The weight isn't an issue when holding the device - but becomes a problem when using a lightweight tripod. Because of the angle of the shaft, the tripod head needs to be tilted forwards - which puts it at risk of toppling.

Verdict

As a camera and a tool, it is stunning. Well put together, solid, and chock full of useful features. Battery life is also brilliant.

The proprietary file format and weird software are a bit annoying but can be worked around.

Yes, it costs a fare whack, but it's a useful gadget especially if you want to see how thermally efficient your house is.

Thanks to TopDon for the review unit.

The Seek Thermal is a curious beast. While you can buy Android phones with built in thermal cameras, and dedicated devices, this is an add-on. Plug it into your existing phone, download an app, and off you go. In theory!

Here's a quick selfie!

Why a selfie?

It's backwards!

If you get the USB-C version, you can plug the camera in for either direction. Great! If you have the micro-USB version, you're stuck in selfie mode. Boo!

Quite why Seek decided to put the connector on this way, I have no idea. There are only a handful of phones where this orientation makes sense.

Improvise Adapt Overcome!

I picked up a cheap OTG adapter. Note: make sure that it is a sync or OTG adapter. Otherwise the camera won't work.

A bit ramshackle, but it works!

Here's a photo of my wife drinking a hot cup of tea.

Photos are 960x1280 resolution and about 600KB - so won't take up too much space on your phone. Weirdly, images are stored in /Pictures/Seek Thermal/ rather than the more normal /DCIM/ folder.

Accuracy

Here's a photo of a mug of boiled water and an ice-cube tray.

That's pretty good! To be honest, I'm not using this for precise measurements - I'm looking for thermal disparities. You can set it to Celsius, Fahrenheit, and Kelvin.

App

The Seek Thermal app is a little basic. It works, but isn't great to look at. It mostly links to lots of videos on how to use it.

You will need to set your device to USB OTG mode - and give the app permission to talk to the camera.

You can choose a variety of overlays - including max and min temperature. You can also add location metadata to the photos and, for some reason, the camera serial number.

If you don't like the default colour palette, that can also be changed.

Usage

Again, basic but workable. The camera makes a constant clicking noise while in operation. Apparently that's normal - but sounds a bit weird. You're unlikely to take surreptitious photos with it. Their FAQ says:

There’s no need to worry, this is simply the noise your camera makes while you are shifting it between different fields of view. The noise you are hearing is the camera focusing and calibrating the image to achieve the highest resolution possible.

There is a manual focus wheel on the camera. It seems to adjust the picture, but I'm not sure how yet.

Video

It also does video.

Apparently, the frame rate is restricted to 15fps due to international munitions sanctions...!

Compare and Contrast

This is a cheap camera. Here's what an expensive FLIR camera produces:

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Thermal Imaging Selfie!
Have serious professionals here measuring the house's heat flow. Have borrowed their Android (!) FLIR camera. pic.x.com/Q1CRyeTyvI

---

That's much clearer - but about twice the price. Speaking of which...

Cost

About £260 for the micro-USB version. If you want higher resolution, expect to pay significantly more.

Youch!

Verdict

This is a bit of a luxury purchase. If you want to see where your house is losing heat, or if there's a hot wire in your walls, or if your radiators are heating up - it's a cool gadget. The app is a bit basic, but works.

Being able to tell the body temperature of strangers leads to some interesting privacy questions.

Would I pay full price for this? No. But if you can pick one up second hand, or borrow one from a hackspace, they're fun and useful. As winter draws in, I'm going to be seeing just how good our home is at retaining heat.

Thanks

Many thanks to Brie for the generous gift.