thermal cameras

[woodyracing]

I'm involved in a company that make low cost thermal cameras (about £1000). These cameras are a big step up in technology from spot temparature meters and allow you to see the heat in real time rather than scout around with a laser spot. They can be used portably with a small pocket Pc (eg iPaq or Palm) or used with a PC, they can also take snapshots and save real time data. The pocket Pc version measures 2 selectable temparature spots at a time and the PC can measure up to 10 simultaneously.

My question is, do you think there is a demand/market for this in motorsport ? for example to view engines/exhausts/tyres etc.

[pitcrew]

sounds very interesting! is it just a serface detector? how accurate is it and what sort of time delays on reciving the data would there be? do you have a web site? 101 questions if its fast and accurate i cant see why this product will not do well if maybe was a little cheaper

[woodyracing]

Yes this type of technology is primarily surface temparature detection, but it depends on the material and internal temparature being observed, and obviously internal temperatures can radiate to the surface. A lot of the cost is in the labour time to produce and test. If you look at the nearest rival products they are priced from about 5K-10K. What makes this technology cheaper is that it uses a low resolution (16x16) detector, this may sound low but with clever interpolation the output display is 128x128 and is more than adequate for many applications.
The cheapest range is the 1011 series which the main housing is a tough plastic rather than metal. The standard 1011 is £1000 but the accuracy is not defined - its not neccessarily wrong or far out, its just been tested less than the high accuracy model 1021 which is defined as +- 2 degrees C and this costs £1500, there is also a high temparature version 300-1000 degrees C, 1031 which costs £2000.
On PC there is latency of around 5ms and the output is at 8 FPS, pocket PCs are a little slower because of their limited processing power.

website Here

anyone interested should call the sales team for a chat, they will be happy to talk to you.

Andy.

[woodyracing]

ah er, I didnt mean to sound like i was flogging the things,,
anyone else think they might be useful in motorsport ?
If they are too expensive for clubbies, what about the "national" teams ?

[Chucky]

Sounds more like an engine developer sort of thing. It certainly has some interesting possibilities.

[pitcrew]

be good in uni's and colleges to show students tire temps ie camber setting on single seaters uneven tire temps etc

[rpmsd]

I heard that a major data system manufacturer was working on making this available for their next generation release of software. When I'm not sure, but they have been working on it for some time.

[RWC]

Sounds like a great way of testing tyres/checking temps while racing for those applications where this is an advantage
Of course f1 and other series have no doubt been using real time tyre temp readers for years but this makes it easier for certain lower formulae