Friday 5 October 2018

A thermal camera from Aldi

I was somewhat surprised to see that discount supermarket Aldi's latest catalogue includes a thermal imaging camera. It's probably more expensive than anything else they sell, at £899, but to be honest that's not a bad price for a 320 by 240 resolution camera of this type. The cheapest near equivalent I could quickly track down cost over £2,000. To be honest, if what you want is either to track heat leakage on a building, a hot spot in a circuit or find an animal in the dark then this should be fine. 320 by 240 is even a reasonable resolution for some artistic thermal imaging. Of course going for 640 by 480 or even more will set you back well over £10K, so 320 by 240 is almost hi-res for a thermal device.

The make is Rothenberger who, amongst other things, produce a wide range of imaging/inspection products. The company was founded in Germany in 1949.

You won't see these in store however ... it's an online special only.

For comparison, the current FLIR One camera, which now clocks in at 160 by 120 sells for around £400 and works with your mobile phone.