Low Resolution Thermopile based cameras

Archive New Product Ideas
1

I was looking into thermal vision cameras (single point servoed and 1x8 arrays) and ran across these guys:

http://www.heimannsensor.com/products_imaging.php

They make analog/SPI thermopile image sensors. The 8x8 gives 70fps, the 32x31 does 18fps.

Cost in reasonable (to stock) quantities starts around $100 and goes up to around $400 depending on resolution and optics. Their demo modules and application modules can run up to $2k, so way outside most people’s wants. These demo units run PIC24’s, so these do NOT need super fancy controllers. And at max framerate the data stream is reasonable for a mid to high end microcontroller to handle and process onboard.

2

I wonder if it would be possible to make some kind of optical-demultiplexer so that you would use 31 thermopile and 31 32-column demultiplexers to scan the image? maybe a grid of 31x32 fiber optic cables with some kind of switch on each one all leading to 31 termopiles?

Me.