Review on Seek Thermal Compact All Purpose Imaging by Kev Mills

Today I received the Android compact model and I used it at work to scan anything that catches my attention. My qualifications: I am an engineer and fabricator of wood and metal and have never used a thermal imaging camera. Although I've only spent about 1 hour with the thermal imager so far, my immediate reactions are: 1. For less than $200 this is a full featured plug and play thermal imager that produces useful impressive thermal images and videos on my Galaxy S7. Well done search!2. I wasn't forced to create an account to use the app. This gave me the option to create it later or skip it, so I skipped it. I hate creating accounts to use the product (I bought it to serve me, not the other way around) so I'm relieved. The application opened and worked immediately and intuitively.3. I still can't figure out how to get the "Spot" temperature readings. I only have one color bar with minimum and maximum color temperature.4. When the brightness of my display was increased, my phone's battery drained faster today due to heavy use of the thermal camera on day one. That's the best $200 I've spent in a long time. I have many different projects that I want to inspect for hot/cold spots and I find this thermal imager will work very well for many of my applications. I will let you know when I have more information. Update September 16, 2017 This device never fails to impress me. I live in the desert in a rented house with poor insulation. After the old, low-quality central air conditioner failed a second time, I installed a 24k BTU air conditioner in the living room and began looking for hotspots around the house (currently on the hunt). Using a thermal imaging camera, I was able to spot hotspots on the ceiling and walls, and also found an unventilated attic in the back of the house that got hot during the day and stayed warm late into the night. I will install a motorized attic fan and vents and turn on the fan after the sun goes down to get the hot air out. Can't wait to see the difference with a thermal camera! I've attached an image showing the rafters through the ceiling at the end of a warm day. Very cool! A few months ago I reupholstered my bike's banana seat and changed the color from all black to black and white. The black seat gets hot on sunny days and burns my butt when I get on the bike. I left the back of the seat (passenger area) and sides black and the area where I sit on the seat white. The new white upholstery felt cooler than the old black, but I had no idea how much until I scanned it with a thermal camera. Doesn't matter! The app works fine on my Galaxy S7. It hasn't crashed or crashed once in the last 5 days, and I haven't heard a word about registering a product or creating an account (hooray!). I quickly figured out how to switch to "Spot" temperature mode and found many other useful display modes. The image processing is fantastic and I always get the data I need. Other thoughts: When I plug the camera into my phone's USB port, I can't charge my phone while using the camera. Maybe if the camera had an extra USB port for charging? However, wireless charging works while using the camera. I'm also worried about an accident (like dropping my phone) that will ruin both the expensive camera and the USB port on my more expensive phone. I reckon a dedicated handheld thermal imaging camera would come in handy here. I've dropped the camera a few times but it's very light and well built and still hasn't got a scratch. I connected a thermal camera to my phone and mounted it in a car mount on the dashboard (upside down) so I could see the road ahead through infrared vision! Then a featureless green screen reminded me that IR radiation doesn't penetrate well through car glass. The screen rotates when I turn the phone upside down just in case I risk mounting it over a motorcycle windshield. I've been thinking about getting another camera, hooking it up to an old Android phone and installing a shotgun to add thermal cameras to my home defense arsenal :) Thermal cameras don't work on reflective metal surfaces either, but I guess that's the nature of IR. I sometimes have to keep this in mind when rendering a scene that contains reflective metal parts, as these tend to show a temperature gradient even though they are the same temperature as the surrounding matte materials. comes with a camera, in itself a very good thing. The tinted and opaque plastic is thick, hard, and highly polished, and the assembly snaps into place perfectly. Overall, I see high-end, consumer-grade hardware and software that work together to deliver a great experience for very little money.