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FLIR Radiometric Lepton Dev Kit

Do you see what we see? With the FLIR Radiometric Lepton® Dev Kit you will be able to bring FLIR's thermal imaging reliability and power to your Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or any ARM based development tool all in an easy to access breadboard friendly package. This kit includes a breakout as well as the Lepton® 2.5 longwave infrared (LWIR) imager. All you need to do to get this kit set up, simply attach the Lepton® imager module into the provided breakout, connect the headers, and you will be seeing in full darkness in no time!

The Radiometric Lepton® LWIR module included in each Dev Kit acts as a sort of camera and packs a resolution of 80 × 60 active pixels into a camera body that is smaller than a dime and captures infrared radiation input in its nominal response wavelength band (from 8 to 14 microns) and outputs a uniform thermal image. The Lepton 2.5 can output a factory-calibrated temperature value for all 4800 pixels in a frame irrespective of the camera temperature with an accuracy of +/-5˚C. Meanwhile, each breakout board in these kits provides the socket for the Lepton, power supply's, 25Mhz Crystal Oscillator, 100 mil header for use in a breadboard or wiring to any host system. A few things to consider about this kit: the breakout board will accept a 3-5V input and regulate it to what the Lepton® wants, to read an image from the lepton module all you need is an SPI port, and to configure the camera settings you also need an I2C port, although this is not required.

Note: This kit comes in two separate parts and will need to be assembled once received. The Radiometric Lepton module is extremely sensitive to electrostatic discharge (ESD). When inserting it into the breakout board be sure to use proper personal grounding, such as a grounding wrist strap, to prevent damage the module.

  • 1x FLIR Lepton® 2.5 - Thermal Imaging Module
  • 1x FLIR Lepton® - Breakout Board
  • LWIR sensor, wavelength 8 to 14 μm
  • 50° HFOV, 60° diagonal
  • 80 (h) × 60 (v) active pixels
  • Thermal sensitivity <50 mK
  • Radiometric accuracy (35°C Blackbody) Greater of:
    • High gain: ±5C @ 25°C
    • Low gain ±10C @ 25°C
  • Pixel Size: 17 micrometers
  • Frame Rate: 9 Hz.
  • Output Format: User-selectable 14-bit, 8-bit (AGC applied), or 24-bit RGB (AGC and colorization applied)
  • SPI video interfaces
  • Two-wire I2C-like serial-control interface
  • Fast time to image (< 1.2 sec)
  • Low operating power, nominally 150 mW (< 160 mW over full temperature range)

FLIR Radiometric Lepton Dev Kit Product Help and Resources

FLIR Lepton Hookup Guide

March 26, 2015

See the invisible world of infrared radiation using the FLIR Dev Kit and Raspberry Pi.

Core Skill: Programming

If a board needs code or communicates somehow, you're going to need to know how to program or interface with it. The programming skill is all about communication and code.

3 Programming

Skill Level: Competent - The toolchain for programming is a bit more complex and will examples may not be explicitly provided for you. You will be required to have a fundamental knowledge of programming and be required to provide your own code. You may need to modify existing libraries or code to work with your specific hardware. Sensor and hardware interfaces will be SPI or I2C.
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Core Skill: Electrical Prototyping

If it requires power, you need to know how much, what all the pins do, and how to hook it up. You may need to reference datasheets, schematics, and know the ins and outs of electronics.

3 Electrical Prototyping

Skill Level: Competent - You will be required to reference a datasheet or schematic to know how to use a component. Your knowledge of a datasheet will only require basic features like power requirements, pinouts, or communications type. Also, you may need a power supply that?s greater than 12V or more than 1A worth of current.
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Comments

Looking for answers to technical questions?

We welcome your comments and suggestions below. However, if you are looking for solutions to technical questions please see our Technical Assistance page.

  • Member #1529865 / about 5 years ago / 1

    Hi, KIT-14654 is pre-equiped with 500-0763-01 (80H x 60V). Can I upgrade resolution by change it to 500-0771-01 (160H x 120V) with the same breakout afterwards?

    • santaimpersonator / about 5 years ago / 1

      I believe that the product page, linked under the Documents tab does mention that the Lepton 2.5 and 3.5 are interchangeable. Otherwise, if you just need a breakout board to interface with the Lepton 3.5, you should take a look at the PureThermal2. I have used that board with the Lepton 3.5 and it is fairly easy to set up; it is also compatible with the Lepton 2.5.

  • SF, please include the typical ranges of the sensor as documented here: https://groupgets-files.s3.amazonaws.com/lepton/Lepton%20Engineering%20Datasheet%20-%20with%20Radiometry.pdf

    Intra-scene Range: High Gain Mode: -10°C to 140°C (typical) Low Gain Mode: -10°C to 450°C (typical)

Customer Reviews

4.3 out of 5

Based on 3 ratings:

Currently viewing all customer reviews.

Nice for prototyping

Really cool and easy to use for prototyping thermal imaging applications, but the resolution is too low to capture details, however, it's still quite handy and fun.

works great. (after some digging into how to actually connect it).

Followed the instructions and got things working after some painful digging into the specs. Would not work as shown in the hook up guide. Had to change the CS location to the one mentioned in the github info. Even the github info shows CS attached to the wrong place in the pictures, but the text will guide you to success. Mine had to be on CE0 (pin across from CLK). Anyway after wasting hours trouble shooting It is running great now. Thanks sparkfun..keep the cool products coming!!!!

Excellent dev kit, a bit expensive

I bought the kit for a home system, to watch over objects and plants. Everything works fine, and very easy to interface with. Cabling is straightforward and interacting is simple with the available libraries.

The sensor itself feels of very good quality (hence the price), and the images produced are really usable---I did not know what to expect from a 80x60 matrix. Sensing is a bit slow to my taste but it just works fine.

My working settings: * Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ * Connected on SPI 0 * Interfacing code in Python, using the pylepton library.

If you opt for pylepton, please be careful with what version of the FLIR you get. This is a LEPTON 2.5 and works out of the box with pylepton. I also have a LEPTON 3.5, and we need to use a specific version of pylepton (from the source code, branch lepton3-dev). I lost so much time on that one---hope you don't.