Review on 📸 HIKMICRO Mini1: 160x120 IR Resolution-25Hz Refresh Rate Thermal Imaging Camera for Android Smartphone by Aaron Villanueva

First let me know I don't know anything. As an example, I converted a small space that was unused in our office into a hobbyist crypto mine without having any prior experience with anything like this. As part of my everlasting lessons in humility that come with this hobby, I quickly realized how much heat even a few old GPUs running 24/7 generate; and how it gets worse in a confined space. For me, the most interesting thing about any new hobby is developing an understanding of things through problem solving. At least that's what I tell myself because I fail a lot. I'm mentioning all of this because I've been keeping my eye on thermal imaging cameras lately because I really want to know the best way to approach my new heat problem. When I got the chance to try it, I was ecstatic. Day one, minute five, this thing didn't disappoint; and demonstrated that I should have picked it up earlier. Just before I went home I put this in my phone and looked at my setup with it. As soon as the GPUs were in the picture, my phone started ringing. Mind you, I didn't do any settings, just hooked up the camera to my phone, so I wasn't sure what was going on. Luckily, a small crosshair alerted me to a GPU with the right temperature. Of course, this card - right next to the chip (which was nice/scary to look at) - was about 50% hotter than it should have been, but other than that it appeared to be working fine. I thought I had set the system to shut down when one of the cards reached a certain temperature, but when I connected the monitor I found that I had set it to stop mining on individual cards when the temperature spiked paused, which it did in this case, didn't even seem to solve the problem on that one card. If I hadn't tried that at the time and checked back before leaving, this card could have gotten so hot overnight that it could potentially damage this card or other components. So it was a pretty decent and exciting first run. It was interesting to see how this chamber strained the component test muscles, but what really interested me was a better understanding of airflow and ambient temperature. The next day, this camera also won in that department. In front of this chamber, I placed the built-in ventilation system relatively blindly to try to remove hot air from the part of the room I suspected it would accumulate. To test my work with this camera, I turned and scanned the top half of the room with the ventilation on and off. No wonder I blew it up there too. Not only did it not always clean the hottest air in the room, it seemed like I placed the air intake too close to the office air conditioner vent. Whenever the A/C shut off after a minute or so, it felt like my air intake was actually sucking the warmest air back into the room from elsewhere in the office. Without the help of this camera I would never have known about it. At some point I'll have to drastically redesign my system, but I feel much more confident that I'll actually be solving problems rather than creating new ones, with a pair of eyes. who can really see my invisible nuisance. I find the quality of the camera's live image to be excellent and it's enhanced by different color schemes to indicate the temperature range. For example, when doing a quick unit test, I like to use a white-hot/black-cold pattern because the temperature difference I'm looking for is very drastic. However, when I'm working with ambient air, the more gradient color bar is very helpful as you get used to where different colors fall on the bar. For some reason captured pictures on my phone get worse. Luckily I haven't felt the need to work with captured images yet so it doesn't diminish my appreciation for the product in the slightest. I will say that touching every button and icon inside is useful. App to get an idea of the device, since the instructions are not very clear and you can do a lot more with it than what is covered in the quick start guide. Quickly find the calibration button and save yourself the headache. All in all I like it very, very much. This has helped me a lot and may even have saved me a few hundred dollars on a burned card. I've never used anything like this to be honest, so I can't say if it's better or worse than the competition. What I can say is that I will be impressed with this little device, at least until I try something else, and I expect to continue to be impressed then.