The long-term goal is to create a capable thermal imaging camera using the Beaglebone Black and a 7" LCD cape as the platform matching some of the features of high end commercial products. However it soon became obvious that I'd need a simpler platform to learn how to use the Lepton module when I started reading the documentation and playing with the various demo codebases. It is a very capable device with a moderately complex interface, both firmware and hardware. Although the device has good default settings I found enabling some features wasn't well documented and the video SPI interface (VoSPI) challenging to implement due to its real-time constraints.
There are a lot of other great projects online to help get going with the FLIR sensors. Pure Engineering is to be commended for making these devices available to makers and provides a wealth of code examples, many designed to work with the previous Lepton models. Max Ritter's DIY Thermocam is probably the most mature and well known. He has done a great job and I pored over his code. Damien Walsh's Leptonic is also really well done and works with the Lepton 3.5 as well. Both Max and Damien were very gracious when I sent them various questions.
I decided to follow Max's lead and build a test platform using a Teensy 3.5 that I had (selected for the multiple SPI interfaces and copious RAM). Unfortunately after soldering the Teensy to a Sparkfun breakout board I stressed the processor BGA package and made the board unreliable. So I replaced it with a Teensy 3.2 hoping it would have enough resources to successfully interface to the Lepton. It does, barely, and the next project log describes the test platform hardware.
Thank you for this excellent project. I am curious about pushing the limits of frame rate. Are you able to achieve a full 9Hz frame rate on the thermal video stream, or do you find that the frame rate is limited to less than 9Hz in practice. Could you imagine getting 2 leptons integrated together and offsetting the thermal stream so that they are off by 55ms, allowing for a combined 18hz signal? Perhaps something with a master clock circuit and then controlling each lepton separately based on the clock timing? Also I'm curious, why do you prefer the pure thermal board to the lepton v2 breakout board?