(on sale for $234) FLIR TCX T4325BN Thermal IP camera

[bp2008]

These thermal cameras are currently on sale at much lower prices than usual, in case anyone has been considering one.

25 degree FOV for $220.99 (USD)
FLIR TCX Mini Bullet Thermal Security Camera (25° Field of View)

50 degree FOV for $246.49 (USD)
FLIR TCX Mini Bullet Thermal Security Camera (50° Field of View)

 

[Kawboy12R]

Nice price drop. You still happy with the motion detection after you made your changes in BI? How far out can you reliably alert to a person or animal? Or car?

 

[nbstl68]

Wonder what's up with a 62% off sale price on these?
I was thinking the 50 deg (or more) FOV would "seem" to make a little more sense as I can only imagine these used for overview perimeter alerts. The wider the focal range the better for that IMO (since you are just looking for intrusion to the area and not ID of course with these), to try and spot someone or something's heat signature wandering through your yard in the dark for an alert trigger.

But then it says the range to "see" someone is MUCH less, (65' for the 50 deg vs. 131 for the 25 deg)
So now you can see more of the yard's horizontal area but cannot detect a heat source until it is a lot closer...

So the choice is either a narrow window for distance or a wider area close up....decisions, decisions...always trade offs.

Cool tech though so I hope the better stuff starts a price drop too.

Any recent video clips of interest you can post?

 

[bp2008]

Well it isn't 100% perfect. If there isn't much temperature contrast in the scene, then it ends up expanding that little contrast to fill the whole image and then tiny changes (even sensor noise) are amplified. Blue Iris's motion detection is handling that remarkably well, and only gets triggered by this in the most extreme of circumstances. I don't think I got more than a few false alarms from this all winter.


At one point, the sensor kind of freaked out and had a random pattern of pixels turn white and a few of them blinked. It remained this way for hours, and when I noticed, I restarted the camera through its web interface, which solved the problem and it hasn't reoccurred.


As winter ended, bugs started arriving of course, and a bug in front of the lens will trigger this just like any other camera. The camera doesn't have IR LEDs of course so it shouldn't attract them very much.


I'd say the manufacturer's specs are actually a little conservative for detection range of people. They advertise 131 feet (40 meters) for this 25 degree FOV model. In my earlier videos, with this camera pointed at the street, the furthest people are about 40 meters away, so you can see they would still be visible and detectable further than that. You could detect a car 100 meters away I'm sure.

Here is a cat that wandered by a couple days ago.


Visible light capture so you know what you are looking at:


Here is a bird on snow:


A dog hunting a skunk:


A squirrel:

 

[cam235]

Nice to see the price drop on these. The image from thermal cameras looks much more "jumpy" than normal video, due to the autoexposure range shift whenever something hot enters the frame. That makes good motion detection hard. One big advantage thermal should have outdoors is being blind to tree branches and shadows of tree branches moving in the wind, due to small temperature contrast. But if the camera insists on immediately adjusting every frame to max out even a small temperature range over the current scene, that's throwing away this advantage. Can the settings be adjusted to have a slow change (eg. 10 seconds or more) on the temperature range shift, and also set a minimum to the displayed temperature range to reduce noise on a nearly- uniform scene? I know you can't turn it off entirely, as the average background temperature is always changing with sunlight & weather.

EDIT: just saw your examples, thank for posting these! Impressed you got motion detection to mostly work even with the exposure changes.

 

[bp2008]

Wonder what's up with a 62% off sale price on these?

I imagine these aren't a hot seller at the usual $350+, so maybe they are just testing the waters to see if lower prices will make them more profit.

I was thinking the 50 deg (or more) FOV would "seem" to make a little more sense as I can only imagine these used for overview perimeter alerts. The wider the focal range the better for that IMO (since you are just looking for intrusion to the area and not ID of course with these), to try and spot someone or something's heat signature wandering through your yard in the dark for an alert trigger.

But then it says the range to "see" someone is MUCH less, (65' for the 50 deg vs. 131 for the 25 deg)
So now you can see more of the yard's horizontal area but cannot detect a heat source until it is a lot closer...

So the choice is either a narrow window for distance or a wider area close up....decisions, decisions...always trade offs.

Yes, I'm sure for where I mounted this I would have been fine with the 50 degree model. But being my first thermal IP camera I didn't want to screw it up on the first go.

Cool tech though so I hope the better stuff starts a price drop too.

Flir has a newer 160x120 sensor I'm hoping to see in a cost-effective IP camera before too long. One of those would make 50+ degree FOV usable at considerably longer distances.

Any recent video clips of interest you can post?

Besides those I posted above, here is one I get a lot of:


Never mind the video corruption; that is Blue Iris's fault and not the camera's. Blue Iris has not been feeling well lately. It actually missed the car leaving several minutes earlier, and only captured it coming back. Perhaps because BI thought too much of the scene changed.

Maybe I should investigate using the built in motion detection somehow.

 

[bp2008]

Nice to see the price drop on these. The image from thermal cameras looks much more "jumpy" than normal video, due to the autoexposure range shift whenever something hot enters the frame. That makes good motion detection hard. One big advantage thermal should have outdoors is being blind to tree branches and shadows of tree branches moving in the wind, due to small temperature contrast. But if the camera insists on immediately adjusting every frame to max out even a small temperature range over the current scene, that's throwing away this advantage. Can the settings be adjusted to have a slow change (eg. 10 seconds or more) on the temperature range shift, and also set a minimum to the displayed temperature range to reduce noise on a nearly- uniform scene? I know you can't turn it off entirely, as the average background temperature is always changing with sunlight & weather.

EDIT: just saw your examples, thank for posting these! Impressed you got motion detection to mostly work even with the exposure changes.

Unfortunately, there are no controls for how the camera encodes the thermal data into an image. Maybe on more expensive models, but not this one. I agree, it would be great if you could slow down the temperature range shift, or manually set the temperature range and just let anything outside that range get clamped (to pure white or pure black). I'm not sure if the built-in motion detection can do better than Blue Iris or not, as I have not tried it (I'm not sure if Blue Iris can monitor the alarm state of the camera anyway).

 

[hmjgriffon]

Kinda cool I guess.

 

[cam235]

That's a pretty good price, considering that just the bare sensor chip itself (80x60 FLIR Lepton) is around $200, and a dev board including the module (no case or anything) is around $300. PureThermal 1 - FLIR Lepton Smart I/O Module v1.3

 

[nbstl68]

Looks like the price has ticked up $30+ bucks on these.

 

[bp2008]

They have a coupon code right there in the product listing "SAVE 15% Use Code SAVE15" which you've overlooked.

 

[nbstl68]

Thanks, just saw that on a side ad riht here on the site.
After your current experience with the 25 deg model, would you get that again of do the 50 deg?

 

[bp2008]

If I had to replace this camera with a new one, then yeah I'd probably go with a 50 degree model. It would probably still be able to reliably detect human-sized things at the distances that are relevant to me. And it would have the benefit of 4x more coverage.

vs

 

[nbstl68]

Have you gotten any more interesting videos or snapshots from this camera?
Would you buy it again?
I also see they have both gone up about $50 in price aince you first posted.
Thx

 

[bp2008]

No, I don't have anything more interesting. Though I can post something more recent.

Yeah I would buy it again, even though this is super low end for a thermal camera. I'm hoping they push out one with the newer 160x120 sensor and hopefully > 9 FPS frame rate. Then I'd be able to get one with a wider field of vision and still have comparable detection range.

These are still on sale for the same price. You've overlooked the coupon code again.

 

[bp2008]

This was a UPS delivery when it was 84°F outside. There is not nearly as much contrast between person and environment as there was over the winter and early spring.

Also, no, you can't have my UPS guy. He is awesome.

 

[bp2008]

The 15% discount code has expired, and a 10% discount code took its place.

 

[nbstl68]

Was just looking at these again for the heck of it...Their price keeps creeping up.
I saw some Hikvision thermal camera video demos on Youtube that looked pretty cool including some dual view cameras and PTZs but I imagine they cost a bundle.
@bp2008, did you ever spring for a 50 deg one or anything similar or just still using this one to play around with?

 

[bp2008]

You always neglect to consider the coupon code that is right there on the page. Right now the 25 degree model is $195 because of Black Friday, which is lower than pretty much ever. 50 degree model is about $217.50.

I was tempted to get a 50 degree one but damit I just know that as soon as I buy it a new model with the 160x120 Lepton 3 sensor will come out, or some hybrid will become available and at a decent price. Of course if I really believed that I would buy it in a second and then everyone interested in thermal IP cameras would owe me a favor.

 

[nbstl68]

I definitely did miss that coupon code right in front of my face.
I want to stick one looking out at a 1 acre back yard area just to see what wanders around at night. I imagine the 50 deg would be the way to go.
But now you have me in the "is something new around the corner" mode too. A hybrid cam like I have seen in some of the Hik demo youtube videos would be awesome. I imagine those are very pricey though and so, maybe would be a Flir version if they came out with one.
Do you think they are nearing a release of something like that or just hoping?

This is the Hik one I was watching on YT.
DS-2TD4035D-50
You seem to be the only person on this forum playing with one of these. I could not find any other reviews.