Amazon turns to Chinese firm on U.S. blacklist to meet thermal camera needs

$10 million divided by 1500 suggests they may have paid about $6666 per camera. Likely cameras aren't the only part of the systems, but still... yeesh.
 
I remember a while ago there was some company claiming to have developed a cheaper way to build thermal cameras, using a relatively simple material that converts the thermal energy into light that can be detected by a more-traditional optical image sensor. Then as quickly as it appeared, that company vanished.

Thermal imaging is ridiculously expensive.
 
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Thermal imaging is ridiculously expensive.

It's not so much thermal is ridiculously expensive as 'fever' / human temperature screening is. For example, FLIR has thermal consumer plugins for a few hundred dollars but they don't claim the accuracy to tell if someone is 98.4 vs 100.4, etc.

These Dahua kits include black bodies that are expensive on their own (few thousand dollars) and have to be put in the FoV to give a reference temperature to even attempt to accurately do such 'fever' screening.
 
Lol, it uses face detection to make sure its checking the temperature at right spot and not a cup of coffee :rofl:
Wake me up when these cameras fall in the more affordable price range and that too comes with assurance of accuracy. ;)