Thermography

10:00 pm
78 degrees
Partly cloudy

I've borrowed a thermal imaging camera from the department. The assignment I have is to learn how to use, what problems arise, and how to better use it in the future. I went out this evening and took some images of the townhouse I live in, then I threw them all into Picasa, then into PhotoSynth to try and stitch them all together and see if you could get a low-cost 3D thermal image.

This is what I got. 8% synth on 80 plus images. I think I have to take two or three times as many in order to get them to synth properly.

What I learned or what I got to see visually was:
1. Brick retained much more heat than the aluminum siding above
2. Bushes, trees, and foliage are cooler, and obstruct readings
3. The outside edge of a facade can be cooler than the interior surface (so there is not an even distribution of heat across a surface).
4. Windows require several images to capture what is really happening
5. Dryer and vent projections require several images in order to capture what is really happening

For instance. Here (above image) is a shot of a dryer vent (shown in the center) from about 20 feet away.
Here (above image) is that same dryer vent from below. You can see that there is a 3.9 degree difference in the readings. Also there seems to be considerable leakage in this area (shown in yellow in both) however, this could be an effect of the outdoor light which was on (first image, lower righthand corner).

Another interesting find was on the indoor imaging. When I shot the west wall I saw that the location of the studs and where the ceiling meets the wall was around 80 degrees, the surface of the wall between the studs was around 78, and the actual joint where ceiling meets wall was above 82.5 degrees. So in a small area there is a 4 degree difference. Albeit not very much, but I am measuring in the spring when the weather is much warmer. So with the rest of the time I have this camera I am going to try a couple of more times to get enough thermal scans to get an image into photosynth.