Comment by jmgao | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmgao | Hacker News Reader

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I've been researching this recently because every time I need to use my FLIR One, it's annoying because I need to find it, charge it, plug it in, and use FLIR's awful software. In the last few years, a Chinese company started selling sensors that seem to be far superior to anything you can get for reasonable prices from FLIR (256x192, and 25Hz since they're not subject to American export controls). I've been looking into buying a Android phone with one of their sensors built in as a replacement, because it seems to have a lot of advantages:

- not needing to futz with a dongle, way better displays than the standalone camera options

- never needing to charge it if you leave it on a wireless charging pad

- lots of internal storage that can automatically sync captured videos/pictures to the cloud

There's tons of options that look great in the $300-$500 range, which is a problem because it makes choosing difficult. This review has me leaning towards getting either a Doogee S98 Pro ($270), or a V20 Pro ($330, newer and has better specifications across the board except for not having wireless charging, so I'd need to get a wireless charging adapter for it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4002_MqVNfY

Its been a little while since I looked at these sensors myself, and if love to know the name of that Chinese company or the name of their line of sensors if that’s easier, so I can search searching for devices using their sensors and even the sensors directly. I’m sure I’ll find them eventually but it’s so hard to search for some Chinese suppliers like this because of the garbage pile of inaccurate product descriptions on sites like AliExpress polluting the search results that basically turns finding a part into a game of cross referencing the effort of sifting through a garbage pile.

Whoops, forgot to mention the name. The company making the sensors is InfiRay. Doogee doesn't even have a product listing for the V20 Pro on their website currently, although you can find one on archive.org that says they're using the Tiny1-C sensor from InfiRay: https://web.archive.org/web/20230601144956/https://doogee.cc...

I searched AliExpress for Android phones with thermal cameras, narrowed it down to three brands (Doogee, Blackview, ulefone), eliminated Blackview because all of their product listings proudly mention that the thermal cameras are by FLIR, and then opened a bunch of tabs to compare specs and search YouTube for review videos that seemed like they weren't paid for. The video I linked above in my comment is from a prominent electronics YouTuber who explicitly states that he bought it on his own and I found another video comparing the FLIR One Pro and S98 Pro that looked promising (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ7NJPvPsk0), which is why I'm deciding between the two options from Doogee now.

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