Thermal imager has high resolution but low cost

Impac Infrared has introduced the IVN 770-P, a high performance, high resolution, fully radiometric 320 by 240 pixel array, thermal imaging camera.

The last year has seen the introduction of several low-cost thermal imaging cameras, says the company.

However, these cameras are low-resolution models using 160 by 120 or smaller pixel array detectors.

While these cameras are suitable for general maintenance applications they cannot satisfy the requirements of many other applications, particularly when looking at small components.

For applications where the targets have small areas of interest, then it is necessary to use a high-resolution 320 by 240 pixel array detector.

A 320 by 240 detector has four times the number of pixels of a 160 by 120 detector and consequently significantly more temperature data is collected using this high-resolution detector.

Arrays containing 320 x 240 pixels have been available in high-end cameras for some time, but only now has the breakthrough been made to bring the 320 x 240 array into the low-cost market place.

The IVN 770-P is probably the most cost-effective, high-resolution camera on the market today and represents a technology breakthrough in the low-cost thermal imaging market, claims Impac Infrared.

The IVN 770-P has a temperature range of 0C to 250C and can resolve temperature differences as small as 0.1C, with a pixel size of just 0.75mm by 0.73mm, at a distance of 0.5m.

Its on-board memory can store up to 400 thermal images in standard jpeg or bit-map format for easy download to a PC, using the USB2.0 interface, for analysing or report writing.

Its integral colour LCD display and one-hand operation makes the IVN 770-P a simple and easy-to-use thermal imaging camera.

The introduction of the IVN 770-P gives the user the option of having a real high-resolution camera rather than the compromise of using a low cost low-resolution camera.