The FLIR ONE Case Gives Your iPhone Thermal Vision

This looks pretty neat. I’m not sure of the exact technology — the sensors that detect out near 8-10 microns are quite expensive, so I doubt those devices just dropped in price by an order of magnitude or more. Some DIY projects use thermopiles (which you can find in point-and-shoot style temperature probes), so perhaps the technology has advanced to where you can make an array of these and project an image onto them. Or perhaps sensors that have a response that doesn’t extend to ~10 microns, but are still sensitive out to 5 or so, are cheap enough. Maybe the device quickly rasters so the sensor can be much cheaper. The fact that it has a regular camera makes me think the IR sensor will have a lesser resolution than the camera, and you get some of the subtlety of shapes from the regular camera with the IR overlaid on its image (if there’s enough visible light).

At first, I was a little skeptical about the potential use cases for a thermal iPhone case for the average consumer, but the company’s representative at CES explained that you could use it for something as simple as figuring out whether your dog is climbing up onto your bed when you leave or not. It could also be used for home security, detecting thermal leaks in your house, or finding water leaks in pipes behind the walls.

Mostly, though, it will be for IR images of cats.

Can’t wait until this comes out so I can get one and also have an excuse to get a new phone.