Explain the uniqueness of this component in the marketplace and price controlled by FLIR. Lepton2 at 80 x 60 pixels or the more expensive Lepton3 at 160 x 120 pixels. My advice would be to include the Lepton core in your quote and detail the options available. Sadly it is not exactly a cheap component, but then it is not a common mass produced CMOS visible light camera. The Lepton is a marvel of modern miniaturisation using the currently available microbolometer production technology. No problem with that but the only lower cost thermal energy sensors that I can think of are much lower resolution, such as the Melexis and Panasonic offerings. You have not specified the purpose of the unit you are being asked to design. I suspect even designing your own core would cost more than a Lepton3. You would then need the ancillary parts such as the lens as well. Building your own core using a sensor from ULIS would be Challenging if you are not familiar with thermal camera design. It is by far the easiest solution for you to use. The Lepton was designed to be a relatively self contained module that can interface easily to a host system that processes its output data. AFAIK, it has no competition in the market at the moment.
The FLIR Lepton is an amazing piece of miniaturisation and the price is actually low for a thermal camera core. Hi stmdude, There is not much choice as SEEK have chosen to not produce a self contained thermal core for OEM use. At the moment, and for the foreseeable future, faulty F1G2 dongles are the cheapest source of LEPTON 3 camera cores. The FLIR designed Silicon diffraction lens is very much a low resolution compromise solution and can be improved upon with conventional optics. I am looking into attaching a better lens assembly to the LEPTON as they may well improve the images produced significantly. It really is a neat little thermal imaging building block.
The joy of the LEPTON is that it is a complete calibrated and configured thermal camera core so just needs interfacing to a host and there is no dead pixel mapping or calibration to worry about writing code for. It may well be possible to re-purpose the F1G2 PCB but I have no experience of that. It will plug straight into one of the Groupgets development PCB's designed for the Lepton 2 and 3. The FLIR One G2 is really easy to open and because the LEPTON 3 is socketed, it is easy to harvest from the PCB. Not forgetting that the iOS version also contains the Apple ID chip Fraser A pretty good experimentation platform at a knock down price. When buying a F1G2 you also get a semi development board and the socket for the Lepton. I have yet to receive one that has a faulty LEPTON Core in it. If you are looking to experiment with a LEPTON 3 on a tight budget, think about buying one of the many customer returns or faulty units. The LEPTON 3 in the F1G2 is no different to that supplied to OEM's in terms of hardware. The purpose of this post is to highlight that there is a relatively cheap and easily accessible source of LEPTON 3 cores out there. The seller also sold two more at a similar price. I have bought several for around £65 and repaired all but one. I am aware of several 'Customer Returns' sellers on eBay who get quite regular stock of faulty or 'unwanted' F1G2 cameras. I have declined the requests as the margins are too small on these cameras to make it worth my time repairing them for the seller.
I have recently been approached to repair large numbers of these cameras that are customer returns. These contain a LEPTON 3 with the optional shutter assembly.
The core is priced at around $250 ! For some time now I have been repairing FLIR One Generation 2 camera dongles. Hi all, As some readers will know, FLIR recently announced that they would be selling the LEPTON 3 imaging core to OEM's.