FLIR Cameras

[Airjordi]

Has anybody got some experience with deck mounted FLIR cameras?

I assume price and power consumption are the major drawbacks. But are there others?

Weighting just around 4kg, wouldn't they be suitable to be mounted on the mast top to deliver the perfect 360° view?

Wouldn't they be a great help in avoiding floating debris, other boats expecially at night?

In case somebody has one of those: Does it have some sort of a AUTO function in which it would scan the horizon and warn of anything coming along similar to a radar alarm? Or is it just manual operation by joystick?

I can't remember having read anything about these things here on this forum. Why's that?

Thank you,
Florian

[Mariano]

Just go to the raymarine page, you'll find all their FLIR cameras and info. The only problem I see of a mast mounted one is that you don't get real 360' view, at some point the mast blocks the camera

[Airjordi]

I've certainly been on their website. Not surprisingly, it all sounds good, there. But I was wondering if there's anybody who has some real life experience with one of these cameras. Like on ocean crossings, night sailing, fog and so on...

[hellosailor]

FLIR won't really show you anything unless there is a heat difference. If a deadhead has been in the water for three weeks and is basically at the same surrounding temperature...you may not notice it. That's where light intensification (starlight scopes) or active infrared becomes superior.

FLIR is designed to see heat sources, and unless that debris was toasting in the sun...FLIR might not show it up.

[Airjordi]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

FLIR won't really show you anything unless there is a heat difference. If a deadhead has been in the water for three weeks and is basically at the same surrounding temperature...you may not notice it. That's where light intensification (starlight scopes) or active infrared becomes superior.

FLIR is designed to see heat sources, and unless that debris was toasting in the sun...FLIR might not show it up.

That was also my assumption. But on some Raymarine videos on YouTube they show clearly visible, smallish planks of wood and similar. Might have just been after sunset with the wood still warm from the sun. I really wonder if you would see a log or container that has been floating a long time with that camera on an average night.

[Pauls]

Yes, you will be able to see wood floating in the water. The reason is that infrared cameras see differences in the thermal energy emitted by different things. Thermal energy emission is a function of both the temperature of the objects and the emissivity of those objects. Emissivity is the amount of energy emitted by an object at a given temperature. Wood and water have different emissivity values so they can be seen.

It can be pretty black out on the ocean at night. The FLIR cameras make things visible. I've used them for some time. Genuine infrared cameras, like the FLIRs, are the Cadillac of night vision. They are greatly superior to the light intensification (ie Starlight) systems. All the high end military night targeting/detection visual systems use true IR. Light amplification is limited to the cheapest applications like individual soldier vision. And it won't be used for that much longer.

[a64pilot]

Having a few thousand hours flying with some pretty high end FLIR, both Paul’s and hellosailor are correct.
However the real honest truth is your not going to be staring at a little screen for hours and hours on end looking for what will barely appear, and then extremely highly unlikely.
Best use would be entering an anchorage at night.
Light intensification and FLIR both have their advantages, if you were in my front seat flying goggles on a night when we hit IR crossover, you would scare me to death, cause you could see so much better on goggles than I could in FLIR, but on a normal night, let me get over by the trees in the shadows, and I’d scare you to death cause I don’t need light with FLIR. Military systems use FLIR cause 99% of what your looking for and or want to shoot at, is hotter than the surrounding terrain.
Goggles have much higher resolution, however the good stuff we are not allowed to have as civilians so it’s sort of a mute point.

Just me, but a good spot light seems to work pretty darn good, seeing as how we don’t have to be stealthy to avoid being shot at.

[hellosailor]

Pauls-
What a64 said. An uninsulated sheet metal cargo cube, baking in the sun all day, would retain some radiant heat several hours into the night, for sure. Something semi-submerged for two weeks, not heating up to begin with, not so much. Some guy who just lost his cement shoes after two months on the bottom, probably not at all.
You may remember a news story last year, where US ground troops in Afghanistan (?) were victims of friendly fire, when a B2 dropped on them. The troops were using IR strobes to identify themselves, the B2 has IR capabiity, "oops" both sides forgot to tell the other that there are different kinds of IR. That the B2 still can't see.

But actually open-market technology seems to be keeping up with the military. The SEAL who got in trouble (3?) years ago for discussing the new 4-lens night vision googles pointed out the they might still be classified--but they were openly shown and discussed online. And still are.

Big difference between $4000 spent with Raytheon and $99.95 spent with Barska.(G)

"we don’t have to be stealthy to avoid being shot at." Well...not in most waters. But these days, there are lots of folks who don't have the courtesy and restraint that ordinary rumrunners used to have.

There's a reason why some larger modern hulls (mono and multi) have an isolated cabin up in the bow, with no internal access to the rest of the hull. That's really a watertight crumple zone, sold under a more diplomatic name as "crew quarters".

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

. . .Just me, but a good spot light seems to work pretty darn good, seeing as how we don’t have to be stealthy to avoid being shot at.

Or radar.

I think FLIR would be neat, but it's a narrow niche application compared to radar, and doesn't do all that much which radar can't do better. FLIR would be a killer app for locating a MOB on a dark night, I guess, but is there really anything else?

I had a good pair of night vision glasses on board for some years (3rd gen? 4th gen? I can't remember). They were fun to play with.

[Mariano]

I´m no expert , but on the video that raymarine has in their page it looks like their cameras have light amplification and IR or an IR illuminator. Seems like a really good piece of gear, but too much $$$$$$$ for me, maybe some day............

[a64pilot]

We used to have IR strobes that snapped onto a 9V battery, had two metal studs that stuck out to the side to program flash rate etc, so your strobe could be different than your buddy’s.
This kind of IR can only be seen by goggles.
We had to boresight our two sensors, the TV and the FLIR once the internal boresight was done we had to do an outfront which would compensate for the 12.1” between the two. I made a metal box with a 6” cut out and put a Coleman lantern in it, TV saw the light, FLIR the heat, an electric light in a metal box like a headlight couldn’t be seen, not enough heat.

Before we went down range to Bosnia, a friend, a CW2 George Kalstom was sent out in an Apache to see if it could find land mines, a ridiculous task of course so we sent the WOJ, well George found every one of the things. Somehow the news found out and there was a cover story on Newsweek I think showing an Apache finding land mines and with the Satcom sending the data to the Pentagon.
What happened was they were only buried a few hours before, so there were little circles of cooler dirt where all the mines were and George found them.
You would not believe how long even Military officers thought we could find land mines.
You could see as plain as day where a vehicle had driven in the desert at night, cause of course the sand was cooler in its tracks, it was very discernible.
The difference between a male and a female can also easily be seen from the heat differences on your upper body.

However every day twice a day you get IR crossover where essentially everything not manmade and or emitting or absorbing heat is the same temp and therefore pretty invisible
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5298629/
Different systems have what is called minimum resolvable temperature, it’s the min temp difference that the sensor could resolve, the TADS on the AH64, the MRT was classified, but it was so good that I had video of rotor blades shadows coasting down in the moonlight, now realize it wasn’t moonlight, but the heat reflected off the moon and its shadow slightly cooling the concrete that I was seeing, it was that good.
Military FLIR of this quality is supercooled and of course in the Millions of $$, really, really good FLIR is supercooled, the thermal detector can detect heat much better if it’s very, very cold.

However give us a day of good, hard rain, and I pretty much was flying blind, everything was within the MRT.
Anything floating and being washed by waves unless it’s alive, has to be very, very close to the waters temp, and therefore not resolvable.

[40 South]

We have FLIR on a commercial ferry I drive (35m @ 30knts). It is no good in fog, rain or very humid conditions. it just "whites out".

It works better in cold conditions where there is greater temperature difference and they have short range and minimal depth of field.


Having said all of the above, on a slow yacht one could be useful but I think for the $$$ other methods would be just as adequate (radar, good lookout etc).

[LakeSuperior]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

I had video of rotor blades shadows coasting down in the moonlight, now realize it wasn’t moonlight, but the heat reflected off the moon and its shadow slightly cooling the concrete that I was seeing, it was that good.

Not sure what you were seeing but I am sure it wasn't it wasn't heat reflecting from the moon.

My guess is that you were seeing a cold sky effect with the warm rotors either reflecting from the pavement and sufficiently blurred by the FLIR frame dwell so that it looked as you described.

[a64pilot]

Looks like you can buy the IR strobe, lord knows why
https://tnvc.com/shop/phoenix-jr-infrared-beacon/
We also had IR lasers you could wear on your finger and point out targets to an A10 Warthog. We had better ways to send targets to each other, but this tiny laser you wore on your finger could put a circle on something a mike or two away that could easily be seen by an aircraft pilot wearing goggles another mile or two away.

Good goggles are much better than you may think. I’d take a pair of goggles for a boat any day, but truthfully a good spotlight may be better. You can see colors etc with a spotlight.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by LakeSuperior

Not sure what you were seeing but I am sure it wasn't it wasn't heat reflecting from the moon.

My guess is that you were seeing a cold sky effect with the warm rotors either reflecting from the pavement and sufficiently blurred by the FLIR frame dwell so that it looked as you described.

Yes, purpose of taking the video was to show the Martin Marietta tech rep. We were thinking maybe bleed over from the TV somehow, never really did figure it out, as you say couldn’t have been FLIR, but somehow it was?
FLIR can really fool you though, common ordinary things don’t look the same under FLIR, even with a lot of experience.
I was shooting an approach into a field in Germany and we noticed the field was full of cows, so of course we didn’t land, did a high fly over, when we returned every cow was gone.
Couldn’t figure it out until the cows began to reappear.
It was rabbits, not cows and we had scared them into their holes.
Sure looked like cows though.