RFTC: FPV FLIR Thermal Camera Comparison, Detection Range and Flight Testing 

Hey, this is a really cool video, and the fact that you're reviewing these cameras for SAR applications is great. Very neat.

Excellent Comparisons and is extremely beneficial to a person like myself who does not have the resources or access to all three models. Extremely helpful!

There is a quote that I have heard attributed to General George Armstrong Custer, which I feel somehow parallels the reaction we're likely to get to this video: “During their lifetimes, there are very few people who will need a gun, but those who do need one will need one very badly.” That same dynamic, I think, will hold true for our most recent project. It will be of modest interest, at best, to your typical FPV flyer or even dedicated fans of our work. However, for that small fraction of our audience who is interested in using drones equipped with thermal imaging cameras for public safety missions, I suspect it will be invaluable. We get a lot of questions about our FLIR, and whether or not it's necessary to purchase an expensive, top-of-the-line unit like ours - a Tau2 640 - to get good results in search and rescue, firefighting, and similar applications. To answer that question, we put high, medium and low resolution cameras side-by-side-by-side in this video, so you can judge for yourself. We also compared different lenses that provide different fields of view on the different cameras, looking at whether they are too narrow to fly with, or too broad to pick up details. Our analysis, in brief: the 640 is awesome, but costs more than twice as much as the medium-resolution 320, which is almost as good in every way that matters. The low-resolution 160 will work in a pinch, but it would be worth it to save up and buy a 320 - increasing your resolution by 100 percent while only increasing your cost by 30 percent. Now, getting back to General Custer: I wasted a couple of hours doing research on him for my original blog post about this video - which became bloated and overwrought even by the generous standards of my own writing. A writer whose name I do not recall once said, “Research is the La Brea tar pit for writers,” and that certainly proved to be true for me in this instance. However, I can think of no reason you should not profit from my ill-considered sojourn into that molten quagmire, so here are some facts I picked up about General Custer along the way: 1) Custer wasn't actually a general when he died at the Battle of Little Bighorn - he was a lieutenant colonel. During the Civil War, he was given a temporary promotion to General (called a “brevet”), but that had expired at the end of the conflict and he reverted to his original rank of captain. By military custom, officers are referred to by the highest rank that they achieved during their career. 2) He attended the United States Military Academy at West Point. Impressive, but he graduated last in his class: 34th out of 34 graduates that year. Today, the person who graduates dead last from West Point each year is known as the “goat.” 3) Custer's military career almost ended before it began. Shortly after graduating, he made what was judged to be a poor decision, by not intervening to stop a fistfight between two soldiers. Such was the opprobrium of his commanders that he was facing a court martial. 4) Only the start of the Civil War, and the Union Army's desperate need for trained officers, saved him from being drummed out of the corps. 5) In 1868, Custer was court martialed at Fort Levenworth, Kansas, for going AWOL to visit his wife. Having learned all that, and much more, I researched the quote that I attributed to Custer in the lead paragraph above and I could find no evidence that he ever actually said it - which made the whole exercise a complete waste of time. However, as any writer will tell you, you should never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.

great video guy! it was what made me finally order my Tau2 336 with 7.5mm. thanks!!

I always come back to this video! Thanks guys. Should do some thermal monocular review\ comparison videos.

Thanks for the video, really awesome work! The reason why the range for Tau2 160 is shorte,r is because the pixels are decimated to twice the size. Hence the same FOV as Tau2 324...

Thanks for the video, been searching for some sort of comparison between different pixels and distance of heat detection.

The dropped camera is a "finder keepers". Also good job and thanks for keeping this companies honest with your instrumented test.

Great Video! Learned a lot, but crave more details. Do you have a simple wiring diagram? Also on one of your other videos you showed us FPV at night. How did you interface the FLIR for FPV? Thanks in advance.

brilliant job by people who know what they are doing, from uk

Another outstanding video! I get nervous putting up a $400 GoPro much less a $10,000 thermal camera. Great info for future public safety operations.

Very helpful my project, thx u

Great informative video guys. Dang that's an expensive test rig! Hopefully the cost of FLIR will drop as new improved tech comes in. Always interesting to watch these in action.

Really nice video guys. Great job!!!

very informative thank you! here's a follow

That FatShark battery can be tucked into the headband ;) Thanks for the great comparison.

I was out there in the fields, but couldn't find the camera ;(

Thanks for the look at some nice equipment.

NICE vid guys. Thanks for sharing!

what a grat video. i cant get any information on youtube abour drone and flir

Not something I might use but very interesting all the same thanks guys

Just a side note to any of you considering using the 30 fps Flir cameras, thinking about exporting to other countries, the US Dept of Commerce requires a paper work trail a mile long for anything over 9 FPS when selling outside of the US.

this was incredibly informative

As always, great job Guys. Thanks for the info.

Wow those are great prices I've been taking the UEX course and most of those sensors are in excess of 30,000 dollars. 4,000 is just about right for that payload, now to mix the gopro and Flir or IR image with a video mixer to the display and have the ability to tune that according to the lighting conditions and what you are trying to find, it would be nice to have both color cues and thermal or at least be able to switch quickly.

the Tau 2 is actually the same camera, just bins the pixels in camera. That is why you get the same fov and a fake pixel pitch. less noise but more detail.

Never watched this channel before but both of these men seem extremely familiar?

Not sure why you did the demo during the day.

What was that group of critters running through the break in the tree at say. 420 deer?

@ 0:51 you dropped a camera . Can i buy it of you for cheap .. lol

great stuff- have you compared NIR and FLIR yet? might make a great video!

Great stuff lads and i'm sorry to say the FLIR cameras are well out of my price range lol,still if your using quads and FPV for commercial use then you would have to go for the top of the range one,if not at the very least the mid range version. Oh and you did have six cameras to start off with but Techenstein said he was going to send me one,so maybe that's why you only have five left now lol. ;-) Top work as usual from you boys = thumbs up.

Hi Guys, thumbs up for this amazing comparison and your great work. Is it possible to tell me which music you used at the beginning and at the end?

Very informative and detailed video guys. I am looking at rigging a Vue Pro up with a micro DVR like shown in the video. Would you be able to provide any links to the models you guys favor ?

Is there really a reason for the 640 to cost that much or is it because it's a very niche market?

Have you done any comparisons between the 320 and 640 using the 19mm lens?

Even the cheapest is was out of the price range of the hobbiest, which is a shame. Althought I think Flir are making some cheap add on for an iPhone, so in theory they could possibly produce a lower cost camera for FPV, but there's hardly much competition out there, so it seems unlikely they'd need to

Great test guys,wish I had pockets full of goodies like that. Do Flir send you the cameras to test or do you fund them yourselves? You reminded me of "The Hoff" when you stripped your jacket off;)

Hi Roswell Flight Test Crew, I just want to ask where do you guys buy the black and white camera? Since I can't afford to buy a Flir Cam that I can put in my tricopter. Many thanks.

6:06 is flow the past tense of fly? What about flown

Which video recording devices did you use and what do you recommend today?

Thanks for sharing.

Great video!

Hi, I loved que video but I have one doubt about flir thermal cameras. Can you compare Flir vue pro 640 vs Flir tau 2 640?

It looked like you drop one of the flir cams when you were taking them out of the pockets

6:42 No what you meant to say there was: "if i would be able to pawn the house, then I would.."

"nope 5" ahah, its crazy that they cost that much but even crazier as to why that is.

I have a tau nr:41640001x here can I found what spec it is and what expansion boar work with. Thank you

How did it feel holding about $30,000 in cameras in your hand? :-)

Lepton is coming. FLIR Systems has developed a technology that will put this kind of performance in very affordable packages. Stay tuned.

Nice demo,when you want to trade in that 120 for some gear let me know. I thought at first gee Raven has grown some new muscle. Waiting for a sub $1000. mini FLIR. I wonder what keeps off far east copies though,

I'm curious what a more affordable alternative to the FLIR Tau2 would be?

I want to use one of these on a rc u2 spy plane and use it for my airsoft

Prices have dropped a lot since

Not to worry, you have enough natural adipose insulation to keep me and you warm.

Is there a cheap ground penetrating radar/sonar out there? in that 4k range?

those vests.....

At 817 what was the funny thing on the path

Basically you pay a lot more for slight better resolution

You need the exercise.

$10000.. holy fuck, yea FLIR sure as hell dont want these cameras in the ordinary Joe hands for sure..

Another terrific video guys!! Hey that park and school looks awfully familiar, wink wink :D Would you guys like a Brushless Gimbal for your FLIR? I'd be happy to design one for ya, just shoot me an email... Or, when is the next PdxDrones meetup???

Shit that is Expensive. More than all my fpv equipment combined even for the chepest one

Why are they so expensive

why you trying it in day light??? it should be tested in the night

Can't wait until this technology is affordable for an average Joe. Probably will be half a century though. : (