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tCam progress and some setbacks

A project log for Lepton 3.5 Thermal Imaging Camera

Documenting my experiments with the FLIR Lepton 3.5 thermal imaging camera.

dan-julioDan Julio 06/23/2020 at 05:080 Comments

The gCore-based camera has now become tCam and has probably outgrown its gCore base.  I added code to enable Wifi and a json-based command processor for remote access and control with a command structure like FireCam.

Two interesting side-effects surfaced.  There is a little noticeable noise in the data from the Lepton when the esp32 is acting as an access point (but not when it is client).  The LCD controller also gets confused on occasion when Wifi is enabled and the Lepton performs a FFC.  I suspect the current required on the 3.3V rail exceeds the ability of the gCore TPS63051 converter and the voltage sags enough to confuse the LCD controller.  I suspect this will be an even bigger problem when adding support to read and write data to a Micro-SD card.

Probably will need to design a new PCB with a better power supply.

In the meantime I also wrote the first version of the desktop application that will be used for remote viewing, analysis and file management in the camera.

Eventually I want to support for multiple selectable sense regions and a plotting module so I can monitor temperature changes over time (e.g. monitoring several areas of PCB).

I also added a new screen to tCam to allow setting emissivity from a list.

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