Light painting with temperature - cheap thermal imaging

Not sure how much profit it'd be able to squeeze out of the IR thermometer[1] market, which are already in fairly common use (the building maintenance people at work use them) and it looks like you can get one for as little as $25.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_thermometer

It's basically an IR thermometer that outputs a color instead of a number reading. Those "gadgets" are already pretty cheap, so not sure if replacing the expensive passive display with a 15 cent rgb led would make anyone profit.

I use this one for checking the oil on my pan to see if it's hot enough for my ribeye steak: http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Non-Contact-Laser-Thermometer-...

If they used an rgb led instead of the read-out, you might be able to buy one for $5.

It's an opportunity similar to opening a steak house, because you managed to fry a really good steak.

Making something cheap, easy, and robust enough for building contractors to use might be handy.

Many people are having insulation installed (in the UK, at least) and having a simple method to show the effectiveness would be good.

It could even be put in the sales pitch. "Here's the heat pouring out of your home. See your neighbours? That money is staying in their home."

Thanks! Total cost of materials was ~$50 or so excluding the Arduino which I already had. With most projects like this one I try switching to a barebones ATMEGA328 (the microcontroller at the heart of the Arduino) if I can to save money, but in this case I needed the Arduino's onboard 5V regulator. I assembled the entire thing this evening.