The Seek Thermal Infrared Camera for iPhone and Android

I think that at some point in the future, smart phones will have a built in infrared camera. But for now, you are going to have to use an IR camera add on. This is the Seek Thermal infrared camera. What do I think about it? Let’s find out.

An Infrared Review

But what does an IR camera do? What can you use it for? Here is a more detailed overview of the physics of infrared light, but I will give you the short version.

• Solid objects produce electromagnetic radiation. We like to call this stuff “light” (not to be confused with visible light).
• When objects increase in temperature, two things happen. First, they produce more light. Second, the wavelength of light gets shorter. Note that they don’t just produce one wavelength, but in general the hotter the object the shorter the wavelength.
• If you look at the wavelength of light (technically, the wavelength of the highest intensity light), you can get an estimate for the temperature of that object.

The best example is your stove element. Before you turn it on, it is room temperature and produces light. Just about all of this light from the element has a wavelength that is much too large for your human eyes to detect. Instead, you see the element because light reflects off the surface and enters your eye. If you turn on the element, it starts to get hot. Eventually, it will get so hot that you can see the light emitted since the wavelength is short enough to be in the visible spectrum.

So the infrared camera take the light that you can’t see and displays a false color image where different colors correspond to different temperatures (mostly).