C-THERMAL - Press kit (English)

6 min readMar 25, 2016

Welcome to the C-THERMAL press kit! Feel free to take images, movies and texts from here. We would appreciate any feedback about our content. Thanks for reading this!

Andreas from C-THERMAL

C-THERMAL - the first smart thermal imager

Energy optimization

Facade of a building seen through C-THERMAL

Up to now, thermal imaging needs a well trained expert in order to interpret captured images and detect energy leaks or mildew hazards in buildings. C-THERMAL will be the game changing device on the thermal imaging market. Through a smart combination of various high tech sensors, our thermal imager is able to detect suspicious areas like damp masonry and heat bridges automatically, without the need for a thermal imaging expert . And C-THERMAL can do even more: as a gadget for daily use it can be a powerful and compact night vision device to enhance personal security or to locate lost pets in complete darkness. It enables surveyors, technicians and DIYers to detect leaky pipes, overloaded circuits and even blockages in pipes. For these applications we have also designed a robust protection bumper.

Security equipment — Night vision

Its compact dimensions make C-TEHRMAL perfectly suitable for security and surveillance applications. Other devices on the market which can be used for night vision applications are expensive and they do not fit well into a pocket. C-THERMAL is a useful companion for the daily use when it comes to personal security in the dark. When a thermal imager is used for night vision applications a critical issue is the switch-on time — C-THERMAL is ready to use within less than 1 second.

Even we ourselves are getting new ideas for interesting applications from our environment nearly every day. It`s just fascinating to see the invisible!

Our aim with C-THERMAL is to find invisible and problematic areas in an easy and fun way with a small device which doesn`t look like the thermal imagers available up to now.

Compact dimensions — Fits in your pocket

How C-THERMAL works

Thermal imagers convert invisible heat radiation to visible light — depending on the application there are various viewing modes available:

How to find problematic areas?

Turn on C-THERMAL, select indoors or outdoors and start to walk around while pointing the camera at a wall, ceiling or a window — C-THERMAL will do the rest for you and automatically highlight suspicious areas on its display.

For the technically interested

Our automatic detection works through a combination of the following sensor data: air pressure, air temperature and air humidity. The automatic detection takes place within the camera software — there is no need for a smart phone.

Features

Automatic detection modes for mildew hazards and heat bridges
Night vision mode with up to 300 m range (for the long range version)
iOS, Android and Windows app for live streaming and access to stored pictures and videos
Internal storage for more than 1000 pictures or up to 4 hours of video
Can connect via USB cable to a PC — works like a normal digital camera
Wireless charging
Ready to use in less than 1 second

Technical details

Two lens variants: 50° (standard) and 25° (long range)
80 x 60 pixel or 160 x 120 pixel microbolometer sensor
WLAN interface
OLED display for a crisp image
USB-C interface
8 Gb internal memory
More than 3 hours battery life
Temperature measuring range: -25°C to 150°C
Size 42 x 42 x 19 mm
Weight 43 g

Open Source

C-THERMAL will be offered also as a DIY-Kit which consists of the camera hardware and it’s housing. The price for this DIY-Kit has not been defined yet, but it will be cheap. The full source code will be hosted on GitHub (camera firmware, iOS, Android and Windows app). This DIY-Kit is perfect for customers which already own a FLIR Lepton core. The kit will also include a back cover for each available Lepton sensor (Lepton 2–25° and 50°, with or without shutter and the upcoming Lepton 3).

Project status

In the last 9 months, we have developed C-THERMAL as well as the iOS and Windows app up to working prototypes. We tested our hardware and software exhaustively. Of course, we have not implemented the automatic detection modes in the camera firmware yet — but we have simulated them, which worked well. We have already determined our manufacturing and testing process.

Price & Competition, Market

Price & Competition

With a target price of $249, C-THERMAL will mostly compete with thermal imaging smart phone accessories, but with one huge advantage: the smart phone is optional — C-THERMAL has its own integrated crisp display but also works together with smart phones, tablets and PCs. As far as we know, C-THERMAL is going to be the first smart thermal imager available on the market.

For our crowdfunding backer, we are going to offer C-THERMAL for $198 (price can still change minimally …) excluding delivery costs.

Market

Our target customers are surveyors, craftsman (and DIYers), energy adviser, safety engineers, wildlife observers and technicians — there are hardly any limits for thermal imaging applications.

About US

We are two technology enthusiasts whose target is to make thermal imaging an easy and affordable task — it should make fun to identify problems.

We`re located in Leibnitz (Austria) and work mostly in our home offices — of course, sometimes we have to visit a laboratory in Graz to do our hardware development and testing.

Andreas Huss (C-THERMAL founder) is an experienced product and software developer, he recently owned a company together with a friend where he developed a web-based smart home system.

Karl Diengsleder-Lambauer (C-THERMAL Co-founder) has many years of experience in state of the art hardware development and works as a self-employed contractor in this industry.