3D scanning with low cost thermal imaging sensors

I posted a comment just now. But I asked about the camera as well and how to get started

Thermal This: Washing Cold Hands in Hot Water

Is the camera sensitive enough to image blood flow on the back of the hand, or neck or forehead? If the persons blood pressure changes, does that show up? Could it? If a very narrow temperature range is amplified and then ADCed to measure small precise changes? I want to buy one of these but your site does not clearly show what is needed to get a complete working system that can talk to Windows losslessly. I want to look at raw data, no “corrections”, “automatic gain control” or “filters”. Where can I get help to buy and use your devices? The cost of the camera is small compared to the time used up trying to read your site.

I bought a WaveShare 80×62 USB Thermal sensor that uses processor from Meridian Innovation. But they only have a demo application, and no way to directly access the camera by USB/Serial. They told me the device has an Ascii language to read and write registers, but then I have to write the code to control the camera? And what computer language do I use for Windows.  I bought a FLIR sensor from Digikey but not sure how to use it.  The last few weeks have been busy.

I just want to set the camera in one place and let it run for a few weeks. Every hour write the data, but as it reads each frame  – gather and display and record frame statistics and cumulative statistics and changes. I made a camera based pulse oximeter some time ago, but only now have time to try thermal cameras.  I want to see how much data about the human body can be gathered by sets of thermal and other cameras.

I will use an Windows 10 Pro, 4 core, Intel I7 computer with 32 G, 512G SSD, and 10 TB storage dedicated to that.  I have four of those systems for testing cameras, but got stuck trying to get lossless data from the cameras. I have a WaveShare MLX90640-D55 that just came in but it speaks I2C I think and not sure what way to read it. I have STM32 Nucleo, Pico, Pi3, Pi4, Nano and other boards but I have not tried to read I2C or SPI with any of them.  I have been wrapping up 25 years of the Internet Foundation and trying now to spend more time on “noise in sensors” which I have wanted to do more seriously now.

I am on the Internet in many places.  Here is my Twitter(X) page that links to other places: @RichardKCollin2 at https://twitter.com/RichardKCollin2

I have made hundreds of videos to teach various things.  Only a few on YouTube. If I can get one (or more) of your systems to work for what I want to do, I can make videos of those, and post algorithms and tools on GitHub. I think the HackaDay.io groups would be interested.  I can post for gravity and geophysics, astronomy and solar groups I have met over the last 20 years.

But I need help getting data. There are beautiful things I can do with lossless (true raw) data, once I have it on the disk or in a stream with good handshaking and buffering. With easy ways to script the data collection schedule, settings, and processing of the data.

Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation

Richard K Collins

About: Richard K Collins

Director, The Internet Foundation Studying formation and optimized collaboration of global communities. Applying the Internet to solve global problems and build sustainable communities. Internet policies, standards and best practices.


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