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Comment by outworlder | Hacker News Reader

I've thought about buying an infrared camera, but I've found them to be terribly expensive. Not in scientific terms as they are precision instruments, but in 'I have some money to spend on amazon but this thing has high three figures so I'll buy something else'. Specifically talking about FLIR and the direct competitor I forgot the name.

Are there any affordable cameras that are not completely trash? Low resolution is ok.

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Mine is an HTI-19 320 x 240 resolution one that was $233 on Amazon. It's not cheap, but I've certainly saved more than that in electricity from problems it identified in the 2.5 years since I bought it. It works just fine.

An infrared camera is great for tracking down and fixing insulation problems in your house, if you own a home. And fixing insulation issues really brings down your heating/cooling bills.

If you don't own a home the value proposition is a lot worse, but $200 or so still isn't bad for something that amounts to a fun toy.

EDIT: Sorry, it was $380 before Amazon points. I should have clicked into the invoice.

The FLIR One or Pro are in the $220-300 range if I remember correctly. They attach to your iphone and use that as the screen an maybe for some processing. In any case it works pretty well for most personal applications you might run across.

Hypothetically speaking you could buy one, find the hot spots, send it back to Amazon.

Morally it’s not exactly solid but at least you’re not standing on the backs of the poor to be a billionaire and all that

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